World Cup winner comes back from dead after being 'lifeless for several minutes'
Germany cult hero Frank Mill reportedly came back from the dead after suffering a cardiac arrest in a taxi while on a visit to Italy in late May.
The 1990 World Cup winner was in Milan to film a documentary about that tournament but according to reports in German media he had a serious health episode while in a taxi not long after landing at Malpensa airport.
According to RTL, Mill was 'lifeless for several minutes before paramedics were able to resuscitate him' having rushed to the roadside where his taxi stopped.
Mill, now 66, was then placed in an induced coma and he spent several days in intensive care before being eventually transferred to a local hospital near his home in Essen. The 17 times capped international remains in a critical condition, Bild reported.
He played a total of 386 Bundesliga matches for Rot-Weiss Essen, Borussia Monchengladbach, Borussia Dortmund and Fortuna Düsseldorf, scoring 123 goals.
Mill is also known for an open goal miss while playing for Dortmund against Bayern in 1986 with commentators and pundits still referring to spurned sitters in the Bundesliga as "a Mill."
In 2021 he told the BBC that fans still pull him aside on the street to remind him of the miss, which hit a post before Bayern cleared.
"Several years ago, I went to a local butcher's shop with my good old friend Matthias Herget, the former West Germany defender,' he said. "An old lady behind the counter wrapped our bread and sausages and when she raised her eyes, she exclaimed loudly: 'Ah! You hit the post!'
"Whenever a guy on the street screams my name and tries to taunt me, I just refuse to react. In general, though, after all this time, I really can laugh about myself.
"It was nuts. I wanted to make the Bayern players look ridiculous, to roll it over the line. But I ran faster than the ball and lost control. It just lay between my legs and then suddenly it happened…"
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