Glenn Hoddle opens up on heart attack ordeal
Tottenham Hotspur and England hero Glenn Hoddle shocked the world in 2018 when it was revealed he had suffered a major heart attack in a London TV studio on his 61st birthday.
The former player-turned-pundit was on set with BT sport when the incident happened, with a source close to the family telling a former teammate that Hoddle had been “close to death” and was saved by the quick thinking of an employee at BT Sport.
Hoddle’s eventual recovery was met by a nation-wide sigh of relief, having returned to punditry work in recent years with both ITV and TNT Sports.
Glenn Hoddle recalls ‘traumatic’ heart attack
Speaking on the latest episode of Sky Bet’s Stick to Football podcast, Hoddle recalled the entire ordeal, stating that a number of remarkable coincidences saved his life that day.
The former Tottenham man reiterated his gratitude to the BT Sports employee, who he claims single-handedly saved his life that day.
“What a gift that Simon Daniels gave me,” Hoddle told the panel when asked about the incident.
“He’s given me life! He was a sound engineer. I wasn’t meant to go because he could have gone and took a phone call – he didn’t – he went back into the studio and saw all the commotion.“He was a volunteer policeman, so he knew how to do CPR. When I met him after I had the operations and everything, he hadn’t done it [CPR] for a long time and had a refresher course a week [before it happened]. He went straight in and did it.”He added: “The big one for me was I was meant to be at home when the heart attack happened. I normally would go, ‘My kids are coming round, they’re going to celebrate my birthday’. I would have gone, ‘No, tell them [BT Sport] I can’t do it’, because it was a late shout on the Friday. I said, ‘Leave it with me’.
“I phoned Zoe [his daughter] and said, ‘Can you come over on a Friday?’ So, they came over on the Friday to celebrate and I went back and said, ‘Yes, I can do it’. That would have been a nightmare.“[Simon Daniels did CPR on me for] over 20 minutes. I can’t remember a thing but because I hit my head so hard, they took me to St Thomas’ [Hospital] to have a scan on my head. They thought my head might have been the problem and they found there was nothing in there – so they took me to St Bartholomew’s.”
When asked about the recovery process, Hoddle explained: “It was horrendous for them [my family] – they had all the trauma in many ways.
“I had a check-up recently and every now and again I have to have a check-up. I have a defibrillator in my body – that was funny because I said to the fella, ‘I didn’t really want it’. I did it for my children and the family. My first question was, ‘I love my golf, where would you suggest I put it!’”James Ridge
James Ridge is a freelance journalist based in the UK. He recently spent time with The United Stand as an online news editor and has covered the beautiful game from England’s eighth tier all the way to the Premier League.
