Fatal Defiance
Fiifi Anaman tells the tragic tale of footballer Raphael Dwamena.
“Call the ambulance!”
This was TV host Blessed Godsbrain Smart.
“Call the ambulance!” he repeated.
Captain Smart, as he is popularly known, had just witnessed someone collapsing live on his TV show, Onua Maakye, on Onua TV in Accra, Ghana’s capital.
The person was a young lady named Yvonne Ama Dwamena. There was panic. Everyone feared the worst.
A double-tragedy?
Just days earlier, Yvonne’s older brother, footballer Raphael Dwamena, had collapsed and died on the field during a league game in Albania, making headlines worldwide.
Here, on a show dedicated to remembering Dwamena, Yvonne had just collapsed after seeing a video clip of her brother and the late Christian Atsu, both players celebrating a goal during a game which they both featured in for Ghana’s senior national men’s football team, the Black Stars, in 2017.
Just nine months after losing Christian Atsu in the Turkey-Syria earthquake, Ghanaians had suffered yet another heartache — the death of a popular, prominent football star, two young men whose lives had been cut short by numbing natural disasters.
Captain Smart’s call for an ambulance, as he later explained, had occurred when the show briefly went off the air after Yvonne had suddenly collapsed, subsequently being rushed to the hospital.
“What was happening was not something we could allow you to see on television,” Smart said when the show resumed. “We hear our sister [Yvonne] has regained consciousness. She has spoken. She is okay. Everything is fine. We thank God.”
Relief.
Dwamena’s mother, Madam Ruby Akapko, who had also been on the show, had been ushered into the makeup room amidst the chaos.
Smart ordered for all the TVs in the makeup room to be turned off, so Madam Akakpo would also not be triggered.
Before the show had begun, Smart, looking melancholic and speaking solemnly, had said:
“We often say that God is the one who gives, and the one who takes. But these days, dear God, with regards to the taking, change things. Because it’s really difficult. Seriously, God has to change the work of His hands.”
Questioning the will of God?
The deceased would have disagreed.
Raphael Dwamena, more than anything else that defined him as a man, was a devout Christian who believed in the unquestionable will of God. “When I die,” he was once quoted by nzz.ch. “that is the will of God.”
It would not be hard to argue that few footballers in the history of the sport have worn their faith on their sleeve as much as Dwamena did. The man could barely say anything in an interview without mentioning God or Jesus Christ, and could barely post anything on social media without an accompanying bible verse. Every pair of boots he wore had either scripture or Christian quotes inscribed on it.
Ballers in God (BIG), a group of christian footballers led by Englishman John Bostock, summed up Dwamena’s deep devotion in the following tribute: “He told the world, not about his incredible talent, or how many times he put the ball in the back of the net, or of his handsome looks, or how generous his beautiful heart was. He told the world about Jesus Christ.”
“For me, the most important thing in life is the Lord Jesus Christ,” Dwamena confessed to Gil Media in an interview. “Cos honestly, everything else will pass away.”
As his favorite bible quotation, 1 Peter 5:2 says, Dwamena saw his fans as flock, and himself as a shepherd, leading by example in the manner of Christ. In a field that is unforgivingly secular, and in a world that increasingly frowns upon the open display of religion professionally, that was a rare philosophy to have, a rare path to tread.
Also rare was his extreme belief in God over reality, faith over science, which really is the central theme of this story — in its beauty and controversy in equal measure.
So then, come along on this story, which is both inspiring and heartbreaking: a story about faith, football and fate; about goals, guts and God.
Here’s the drama that is the story of Raphael Dwamena.
Strangely, football-related deaths are pretty common.
How common?
Well, consider this: we’re just two months into the year 2024, and two have already occurred.
First, there was Guinea Bissau’s Gefrison Cande, playing for Portuguese lower league side FC Albernoense, who collapsed and died in the 9th minute of a game against Sao Domingos FC in Southern Portugal. This was on January 7.
And then there was another on February 10: Indonesian Septian Raharja, who was…you would never guess this…struck by lightning during a friendly game.
The legendary Pele once famously described football as “the beautiful game”, but the phenomenon has gotten ugly many times in the past.
The earliest recorded death in football happened in August 1874, almost 150 years ago, when 19-year-old Scottish Robert Atherley died of a ruptured stomach after being kicked.
Since then, it has been an almost yearly affair. The grim reaper assigned to the sport has been busy harvesting souls.
For Ghanaians, the last 15 years has seen quite a number.
In March 2010, Bartholomew Opoku died after he collapsed in a Ghanaian top flight game featuring his club Kessben FC and Liberty Professionals. The 19-year-old’s death came out of the blue. “There was no hint that he was unwell,” said then Kessben spokesperson Fred Acheampong.
Just eight months later, there was the story of defender Benjamin Owusu, who was 21, and who had captained the Ghana national Under-17 side, the Black Starlets, to bronze medals at the 2007 African Championship in Togo. A report said Owusu collapsed and died while playing for his Beninois team Cavaliers FC Parakou, although the Ghana Football Association’s (GFA’s) website later claimed he had died in Kumasi after a period of ill-health.
Then there was November 2023 — a month so dark, it happened back to back…to back. Apart from Raphael Dwamena, who died on the 11th, there were two other players of Ghanaian descent — two German-Ghanaians, to be specific — who perished under football-related circumstances.
On the same day Dwamena died, Irvin Kwaku Esoun Oduro, playing in Germany for DJK Tus Korne, crashed into an opponent of BW Alstedde in an Under-15 game and fell motionless. Five days later, he died, aged 14.
Now, the 28th of November: here was 25-year-old Agyemang Diawusie of SSV Jahn Regensburg in the German third division, who died from what was reported to be heart disease. Weeks earlier, on November 4, he had been forcibly substituted during his club’s game against TSV 1860 Munich, apparently due to breathing problems, never recovering.
Indeed, FIFA, the world football governing body, once commissioned a study named the FIFA Sudden Death Report (FIFA-SDR). This report examined football-related deaths, and was worked on by scholars from Germany’s Saarland University. It was published in 2020.
There was a five-year period, from 2014 to 2018, under review. The research team recorded 617 cases, and the vast majority of cases were attributed to “heart disease”.
Now here’s where the story really begins: Raphael Dwamena, unfortunately, suffered from heart disease.
It wasn’t always so. Well at least, it wasn’t always known to be so. Raphael Dwamena had nothing to do with heart disease until 2017, before he turned 22.
Dwamena’s career properly took off with Red Bull Academy in Ghana (RB Ghana) when he was 16.
With the RB Ghana Under-17 team, he once participated in a tournament in Croix, France, in 2014. He was awarded the best player award as the team finished as silver-medalists, and was invited by the parent club in Austria, Red Bull Salzburg (RB Salzburg), for a one-week trial.
He passed. With him was his RB Ghana teammate David Atanga, who had emerged top scorer at the tournament.
Dwamena and Atanga returned to Ghana with the RB Ghana team, and shortly afterwards, there was a demonstration which led to all but two of the players being sacked from the club.
Had they not passed their trial at RB Salzburg, Dwamena and Atanga would have been sacked too, possibly hurting their future. “The Lord has ways of taking us to the next level in our lives,” Dwamena later said in an interview. “The Lord does have good plans for us. Nothing happens by accident; everything happens for a reason.”
Dwamena joined the U-18 team of RB Salzburg in Austria, where he excelled, notably scoring seven goals in four games during a tournament in June 2014.
He struggled to find his feet when he was promoted to the RB Salzburg senior team, and was eventually loaned to the club’s feeder team, FC Liefering, which played in the Austrian second division. It was in July 2014.
Dwamena would score six goals in 27 games for Liefering before encountering a challenging set-back.
At a crucial time during Dwamena’s time at Liefering, he suffered a strange injury. This injury was strange because all medical checks — including MRI scans — couldn’t spot the cause. But Dwamena was in pain. He couldn’t play.
The injury would prove costly: Liefering, finding no use for an injured player, decided to cut their losses. They decided not to renew Dwamena’s contract.
Dwamena was distraught. He flew back to Ghana, uncertain about whether he would play football again. He was 19 years old, and his career hung in the balance. “He told me that it was one of the most difficult times in his career,” said a friend of Dwamena’s, who agreed to speak anonymously. We’ll call him anonymous friend number one. “He didn’t know what to do.”
Dwamena’s source of strength and support during this time was Ama Kwanimaah, his girlfriend then, whom he would marry in 2017. Ama helped her boyfriend “sneak” back into the country without his family’s knowledge, and opened up her doors to him when he was at his lowest.
Meanwhile, in a bid to pick up the pieces, Dwamena turned to a physio who had treated him at RB Ghana during his years at the club. “What’s wrong with me?” he asked the physio, frustratingly. “I need you to check. I don’t understand.”
The physio assessed him, and also — on the face of it — couldn’t figure out what the injury was. He told Dwamena he couldn’t make any promises of healing to soothe his painful feeling, but he would try, at least. Dwamena would later move in with the physio for treatment.
It was in this physio’s neighbourhood, Tema New Town, that Dwamena encountered a pastor who would change his life.
The pastor invited Dwamena to church. He went.
From then on, Dwamena— who confessed that he had only been a passive christian in his life before then — would go to the pastor’s church for prayer sessions anytime he finished physio sessions, almost every day of the week. And, especially as his pain wasn’t going away with the physio sessions, Dwamena invested his time and hope in the prayer sessions.
This was in June 2015. Dwamena would later say that this was when he “met Jesus in a totally new way”, a way that left him “floored and humbled”.
One day, after an afternoon prayer session, Dwamena confessed to the pastor that he didn’t feel pain in his leg anymore. He further told the pastor that he wanted to test his leg in a community game that would be happening at a park in Tema New Town. The pastor, excited, gave him his blessings.
Dwamena picked up his boots and headed off to the pitch. After about 25 minutes of playing, he became certain — he was healed. It was a miracle.
He would go on to play matches in the next few days just to make sure, and each time, he couldn’t believe how he no longer felt pain, couldn’t believe how strong he’d grown, couldn’t believe how the injury had vanished into thin air.
At that point, he became sure that it was the prayers to God that had delivered him from the strange injury — which he came to believe was spiritual. “He believed the healing was divine, not medical,” said anonymous friend number one.
It would prove to be the beginning of Dwamena’s unwavering faith in God.
A few weeks later, Dwamena received a call about an opportunity to have a one-week trial at Austria Lustenau, a second tier side in Austria. God, he believed, had given him a second chance.
Dwamena would dedicate his life to God as a tribute to that divine healing, becoming a Christian who is a footballer, rather than a footballer who is a Christian.
He passed the trial and signed with Austria Lustenau, where he would later have his major career breakthrough, scoring 21 goals in 22 games in the first half of the 2016/17 season.
He was now 21 years old, and he was that lanky, lethal, left-footed goal machine from Ghana making waves in Austria.
His career had finally taken off in the high-flying manner he had dreamed of while growing up in the Eastern regional town of Nkawkaw in Ghana.
His form at Lustenau led to Swiss giants FC Zurich discovering him.
They signed him in January 2017.
Unfortunately, his big break would be accompanied by a big problem.
Dwamena’s heart issue was first detected when he moved to FC Zurich. “We detected some heart irregularities with Raphael,” remembered Ancillo Canepa, Zurich’s president. “We discussed it with the player and different medical specialists and cardiologists.”
It came as a “why me?!” kind of shock, as it came out of nowhere — Dwamena himself would confirm that there was no history of heart disease in his family.
After further tests and checks, the medical experts gave Dwamena the all-clear: he could continue as a footballer. The FC Zurich move was completed on January 27, 2017.
However, the club resorted to having a mobile defibrillator by the pitch anytime Dwamena was playing…just in case.
He went on to score 12 goals in 18 games to help Zurich win the Swiss Challenge League, which is the Swiss second tier, qualifying them for the top flight: the Swiss Super League. Canepa praised him as an “excellent” striker. “Raphael is a player and person I would never forget,” he said.
By the end of the 2016/17 season, Dwamena had scored 33 goals in 41 games across both Austria Lustenau and FC Zurich, a tally that made him the highest scoring Ghanaian playing anywhere in the world.
Just eight months into his contract at Zurich, Dwamena had impressed so much that he started attracting interest from the big leagues. Big clubs came knocking. In the end, English side Brighton and Hove Albion decided to pay 10 million pounds to sign the striker on a four-year deal.
Brighton’s coach Chris Hughton, an Irishman with a Ghanaian father who would years later coach the Ghana national team, said his scouting team had identified Dwamena as a “quality player”. Dwamena was set to join the club subject to passing a medical, getting a work permit and obtaining international clearance.
It was a move that would see Dwamena fulfill his dream of playing in the most popular, most prestigious league in the world — the Premier League, the very pinnacle. On the flight to England, Dwamena was nervous. What if his heart condition came up during the medical? “Father Lord, if it is in your will, let it happen,” he remembered praying. “If not, I’m still yours.”
As it turned out, it was not in God’s will. Brighton’s intensive medical procedure, which uses MRI scans to investigate problems flagged through initial tests before specialists review it, discovered issues with Dwamena’s heart. The move fell apart.
Zurich president Canepa did not take the breakdown well. He said he was “surprised” at the outcome, because his club had done their own tests on Dwamena before he had flown out to England, and that Brighton had acted in an “amateurish and unprofessional” manner.
It was a heartbreaking setback for Dwamena, but the young striker accepted his fate with faith. “I prayed and thanked the Lord that it was His will that I would not be there,” Dwamena would later recall in an interview. “Even though it might look awkward in the eyes of other people, I know who I’m serving. I know who stands behind me. So…uhmm…yeah, God is good.”
Dwamena returned to Zurich, who gladly accepted him back. He had further examinations for three weeks, and later had a chip implanted in his chest through a minor surgery. It was an implantable loop recorder, otherwise known as a heart reading chip. “Glory to god, everything is fine,” he told Starr FM after the process.
He would go on to have an underwhelming season by his standards: 13 goals in 36 games for the 2017/18 season, but that would be enough to earn him a move to Spanish La Liga side Levante UD.
His first season in Spain, the 2018/19 season, was difficult for him. He scored only once in just 15 appearances across all competitions.
At the end of the season, he was loaned out to Spanish second tier side Real Zaragoza.
It was at Zaragoza that his heart issue developed into a life-threatening one.
In October 2019, Dwamena became unwell at half time during a match. It was only his nineth appearance for the club.
The next day, the club conducted some tests. The results? “The medical services of Real Zaragoza, during a medical test, have detected a health problem in the footballer Raphael Dwamena that prevents him, for the moment, from playing sports,” announced Zaragoza’s official website.
It would later emerge that the tests revealed Dwamena had a dangerously irregular and fast heart rate.
He had turned 24 the month before, with his whole career ahead of him. “I lost confidence,” Dwamena remembered. “It was really challenging.”
In January 2020, after months on the sidelines, it became clear that a solution needed to be settled on.
Dr. Antonio Asso, a cardiologist based in Zaragoza, diagnosed Dwamena’s problem. He said the Ghanaian was suffering from a condition in his heart muscle that made him prone to high-risk ventricular arrhythmias, which is a term for abnormal heartbeats.
Years later, Albanian doctor Skender Brataj would reveal the technical term for this to be hypertrophic cardiomyopathy — a condition where the muscles in the heart’s walls become abnormally thick, making it hard for the heart to pump blood. This, eerily, was the same condition that took the life of the celebrated Cameroonian midfielder Marc Vivien Foe, who collapsed and died on the pitch at the Stade Gerland in Lyon, France, during his country’s FIFA Confederations Cup semi-final against Colombia in June 2003.
Dwamena was at the crossroads. His condition made it unsafe for him to be involved in activities that required too much physical exertion — basically, football. But he loved football so much. So, what was he going to do?
After much convincing, Dwamena agreed to undergo surgery to have an Implantable Cardioverter-Defibrillator (ICD — simply known as a defibrillator) fixed in his heart. The ICD is a battery-powered device meant to regulate heart rate and kickstart the heart in case of failure.
And so it happened. The surgery happened at the Miguel Servet Hospital in Zaragoza, under Asso’s supervision. The ICD was the immediate, necessary measure to “guarantee” Dwamena’s life, according to Asso, but for the future, the cardiologist also recommended a process called catheter ablation, where tubes are passed through blood vessels to the heart.
It was a no from Dwamena. It was already hard enough for him to accept the ICD. “It took pains to convince him to have the implant because he believed his condition was God’s desire,” Asso recalled.
Dwamena had to stay away from football in order to recover. During this period, he was advised to retire. “Obviously, it was not a good feeling to have to leave football,” he told El Periodico De Aragon. “It was a hard blow to stop playing at that time. But I knew that I would play again because God is always faithful and is always with me.”
In August 2020, after eight months away, Dwamena decided to resume playing…with the defibrillator in his chest. It was unexpected, unpopular — perhaps even unwise.
Asso wasn’t the only doctor who advised against it. “I told them I appreciate their opinion, but I didn’t want to stop,” Dwamena told Super Sport in an interview. “Each doctor had his own opinions and I respected them,” he said in another interview. “I looked for different evaluations. I respected their roles and jobs, but my wish was to get back to playing and do everything possible to achieve it.”
Dwamena’s mother would years later reveal that the family tried to talk him out of his decision to keep playing, “but the thing is, when you have a gift inside of you, you can’t hide it.” “It’s been always my desire to play and enjoy football,” Dwamena once said.
Asso said he had “ended hopes of influencing him”. As the Athletic wrote, “this is the story of a talented footballer who could not face giving up what he loved.”
“At all times, I always feel like nothing is wrong with me,” Dwamena said. “I believe that God is the one who takes care of my heart. I may have symptoms of heart problems or other things, but I am never afraid. God is with me.”
It was easy to argue, out of concern, that Dwamena was being careless. That he was being delusional. That he was in denial. And it could be, except what we know is that this was a man immensely immersed in his religion, which essentially conditioned him to have faith in the face of fatal odds. That, coupled with his powerful passion for football, meant he was always going to dare death.
As Dwamena’s agent in Albania would later say, Dwamena “believed a lot in God”, and as a result, was “fighting against medical things.” “This was his personal decision,” the agent concluded.
“For normal people, there are impossible things, but not for God,” Dwamena said then, defiantly. “He is there for me. I know it seems difficult, but this is life. Each of us has his own journey.”
It was his own journey alright, and the next stop was Denmark, where he signed for top flight club Vejle Boldklub. It was a bold move.
To be fair, it wasn’t being done without precautions, Jacob Kruger, Vejle’s sporting director, took many steps to make sure Dwamena was okay to play. Every week in Denmark, Dwamena was monitored by Vejle’s doctors, in training and on matchdays. He also played with a pulse watch to monitor his heart rate.
And, afterall, players are allowed to play with defibrillators, though it is not advisable, and though it is not accepted in all jurisdictions. Manchester United’s Danish playmaker, Christian Eriksen, for instance, plays with a defibrillator now after infamously suffering a cardiac arrest at the 2020 Euros.
Dwamena scored on his debut for Vejle in the Danish Super League, and went on to make four more appearances, scoring another goal.
But, before a league match against AaB, more complications with his condition were detected. Due to this, Vejle announced on October 26, 2020 that Dwamena had to stay off the pitch for a while. The club knew that they were only being diplomatic, letting him down easy, because the problem was more serious than feared. A few days later, the club would confirm that Dwamena’s time with them, and possibly with football, had come to an end.
Jacob Kruger said it had been discovered that Dwamena’s heart limit values had reached high levels. “We must, based on a health professional’s assessment as a club, face the consequence,” he said. “Raphael is therefore taken off the field. We are of course, sorry on Raphael’s behalf, but the parties have been aware from the outset of the consequence that would have been the case if Raphael’s monitoring had exceeded the monitoring values in the measurement.”
Exceeding the monitoring values would have meant Dwamena would collapse on the pitch, which the club wanted to avoid.
His contract was being cancelled after just two months, but Dwamena took the turn of events in good faith. “I am truly grateful for the opportunity Vejle Boldklub gave me to play football again,” he told the club’s website. “Now I have been taken off the field and under medical supervision.”
He wasn’t discouraged. No. Not with his faith still intact, shaping him, leading him. Dwamena had mastered having high hopes, even in the face of deep disappointment. “Life shouldn’t be always like, smooth, you know,” he once said. “Sometimes, you’ve got crooked ways for you. I really appreciate life, what I’m really going through, you understand? The endurance He [God] has given me to wait.”
Vejle graciously kept him on their books for seven more months in a coaching capacity, but the indefatigable Dwamena still craved to play. He just wouldn’t give up
The security and safety off the pitch wasn’t cutting it for him — he wanted to be involved with the uncertainty on it.
And so he left Denmark and went on to sign for Austrian second tier side BW Linz.
It was in June 2021.
As Ghanasoccernet rightly observed, BW Linz had “defied all odds” to sign Dwamena, not least because of his heart issues. They were convinced it was worth it, because as they claimed, “apart from Salzburg, you won’t find a player with the quality of a healthy Raphael Dwamena in all of Austria”.
“My athletic path is far from over,” Dwamena indicated. “I feel very fit and want to achieve great things.”
The club would claim that medical tests on Dwamena “went very well.” “Of course,” they added, “his medical history was also carefully examined.”
But, as it turned out, it would take just four months for a near-tragedy to strike, and two more months for the two-year contract to be prematurely cancelled.
On the 28th of October, 2021, 20 minutes into an Austrian Cup game between BW Linz and TSV Hartberg, it finally happened — what was as feared as it was expected.
Dwamena collapsed on the pitch, due to what Asso later described as ventricular fibrillation. Basically, ventricular fibrillation is when the heart’s rhythm becomes chaotic and needs an electric discharge within 10 minutes to avoid death.
Fortunately, Dwamena didn’t lose his life, as the defibrillator kicked in and saved him. He was treated on the pitch — it was reported that he was conscious the entire time — and later sent to the hospital, where he recovered. The game was abandoned.
BW Linz released pictures of Dwamena on his hospital bed to calm down worried family and fans. Dwamena, giving a thumbs up, was wearing two things; his trademark smile, and a T-shirt with the inscription: Jesus is not a weekend thing.
Dwamena would later brush off the incident, denying that it was a collapse. “I received an electric shock from the defibrillator,” he explained, according to Ghanasoccernet. “It hurts and knocks you off your feet. But I didn’t collapse.”
According to BW Linz sport director Tino Wawra, the medics said the defibrillator corrected Dwamena’s heartbeat four times. “The doctor’s testimony was that his life was never in acute danger because of his defibrillator,” he said.
The defibrillator. That life-saving defibrillator.
In December 2021, BW Linz released Dwamena from his contract, because, as Wawra told Laola1, “the risk is just too great for us.” “We are very sorry for him,” Wawra said. “He is a great guy, has a top character. That’s why the decision is all the more difficult for us. It’s a shame that he probably has to think about a final retirement now.”
A month earlier, the respected GFA and Confederation of African Football (CAF) medical officer, Dr. Prince Pamboe, had echoed similar suggestions of retirement for Dwamena. “It’s time his manager sits with [him] to have a discussion,” Pamboe said, going on to say there was a need for a “re-evaluation”.
January 2022 was when it happened: a critical turning point. Raphael Dwamena flew into Switzerland to have that life-saving defibrillator removed — again, against bargains with doctors.
There were pleas from family, friends, and his agent, Philipp Degen. But it was tunnel vision for Dwamena. He had his eyes on the prize — freedom from the defibrillator, at any cost. “Any other person would be horrified in such a situation,” Degen would later say, “but instead of science, he believed in God.”
“We had heated arguments on this decision,” revealed another close friend of Dwamena, who also agreed to speak on condition of anonymity. We’ll call him anonymous friend number two. “He had his views, I had mine. But in the end, it was his decision to make.”
Dwamena was basically going off his life support, and was going to be a dead man walking.
Suicide?
What was he thinking?!
In order to understand what was going through his mind, we need to rewind to the collapse episode at BW Linz, and examine his words carefully.
Remember? Dwamena said the shock that the defibrillator discharged to save his heart from failing “hurt” and “knocked” him off his feet. Of course, the ICD is an electric device, with a battery that lasts from six to ten years.
It was clear Dwamena was not happy with the subcutaneous device — he had been against it from the start, and was sure now that he didn’t like the process of receiving electric shocks to his heart, even if it was life-saving. Dwamena said it was a “state of panic” for him when he received “several” electrical shocks from the defibrillator during the BW Linz collapse episode.
“He often told me the defibrillator made him uncomfortable,” said anonymous friend number one. “He said it gave him pains that he found hard to explain.”
In truth, the idea of having a man-made device determining the operation of his God-given heart was always going to be incongruous considering the level of his faith in God — it was going to make him feel like he was depending on man rather than God.
Indeed, in 2021, the year before, Dwamena had told those close to him, including his former Austria Lustenau teammate Pius Grabher, that he wanted to get rid of the defibrillator. According to Dwamena, it was “God’s plan”. Basically, God’s will.
Now, here’s the elephant in the room. It’s complicated. It’s controversial. But it has to be asked: was the removal of the defibrillator truly the will of God? Or it was the will of Raphael Dwamena?
Of course, religious issues are sensitive, especially when weighed against science, making this question hard to address, certain opinions hard to express. But there’s a way to understand Dwamena, according to anonymous friend number one.
According to him, Dwamena, throughout his professional life, believed that his journey — against very obscure obstacles — had been solely sustained by “grace” of God. Dwamena believed that this generous grace was the power that protected him, without human intervention and interference; power that was unmerited in its donation and miraculous in its operation.
“He only believed in the grace of God and nothing else,” said anonymous friend number one. “According to him, it was God from day one. Only God. He thought, given how far God had brought him, that if it was God’s will for him to die, then so be it.”
So, again, God’s will or Dwamena’s will?
The answer, clearly, is that it didn’t matter. What mattered was that Dwamena believed it was God’s will. What mattered was that he believed it was God who protected his heart for all the years he played football without a defibrillator. What mattered was that he believed if God did not need help then, then He surely didn’t need it now.
Simply, if God was ever going to withdraw His grace at any point, then He would have had a good reason to — a reason Dwamena, based on his unquestionable faith, would never question.
Meanwhile, Dwamena had decided. The ICD, he was convinced, was the problem rather than the solution. “Even though he had been told that it was the ICD that had actually saved him,” wrote journalist Paolo Fiorenza in fanpage.it, “he became convinced that the device was the source of his problems and decided to remove it.”
And so it happened: Dwamena underwent a complex, complicated medical procedure, barely tried before, to remove the ICD without replacing it with anything. The surgery itself, like life without an ICD, given his heart condition, could have easily claimed his life.
But he was resolute. Indeed, upon being discharged, Dwamena willingly signed documents absolving the doctors from any responsibility or blame from death caused by a future cardiac episode. For everyone else, he had taken his destiny into his own hands. But for him, it meant finally surrendering his destiny solely into the hands of God.
“We are very religious,” former Ghana assistant coach Didi Dramani explained of Dwamena’s Ghanaian background, in an attempt to make sense of the decision. “If medically you are being supported by a gadget to help sustain your life, you can sign documents to ask for it to be taken out and then you can live and then accept your destiny.”
Removing the ICD, thus leaving his heart vulnerable and defenseless, was going to exponentially increase the possibility of Dwamena dying if he ever decided to play again.
In an interview he granted to Neue Zurcher Zeitung in October 2022, Dwamena seemed to have already made peace with a possibility so morbid, even though, well, God forbid.
“It is God’s will if I die,” he said. “People around me will be sad for a few hours or maybe for a few days, but they will get over it. I don’t live to please people, only God.”
Nine months after the removal of the ICD, Dwamena made yet another audacious attempt to return to the pitch.
It was akin to giving himself a death sentence, but he didn’t mind. “I have been visited by many doctors, and they all say something different,” he said. “I respect their opinions and diagnoses. But I don’t take them seriously.”
Many close to Dwamena advised that he undertake a career change. There was much more he could do in football than play, they argued. He was, they rightly observed, well-spoken, charismatic and intelligent, and could have been a scout, a manager, an analyst, or an agent. According to The Athletic, a close former friend begged Dwamena to hang his boots. “You are more important as a person than as a footballer,” he told Dwamena.
But the man simply wanted to play.
“Sometimes I laugh,” Dwamena would later say in an interview regarding advice from doctors and friends. “Only one can tell me when it’s time to stop — the Lord.”
Dwamena found it hard finding a club. Of course, no club was willing to conspire to kill him.
Eventually, though, BSC Old Boys, in the Swiss fifth tier, signed him up. It was in September 2022.
Dwamena signed a risk waiver with the club, and reportedly didn’t have a medical.
Surprisingly, he would survive and thrive. He went on to score eight goals in 11 matches during a short stint at the club — a period which saw him not experiencing any heart-related issues.
“We knew about his problems and we also sent him to a doctor who warned him and us,” said Old Boys chairman Christian Schmid. “We wanted to convince him to have a defibrillator inserted again, but unfortunately, he didn’t do that.”
Dwamena’s fiery form under the Swiss football league pile somehow caught the eye of Albanian top flight side Egnatia Rrogozhine.
The club would sign him in December 2022.
At a time when clubs were avoiding Dwamena like the plague because of his haunted history, it was curious why and how Egnatia decided to take a chance on him.
Of course, under different circumstances, all other things being equal, Dwamena would have had no problem walking into any big club in Europe — he was once one of the most talented, most prolific strikers operating on the continent. But yes, this was the heart-problem-ridden dude without a defibrillator.
Egnatia’s general director, Klejdi Zenelaj, said Dwamena “passed everything medically” before joining the club. Unlike had happened at BSC Old Boys, there was no need for Dwamena to sign a risk waiver because “doctors said he’d passed all the medical tests.”
Zenelaj said the club spoke to Dwamena about why he had the defibrillator removed, and the striker said it “caused problems” for him. Dwamena’s agent in Albania said the footballer did “double, triple medical checks” for his move, and that given the thorough nature of precautions, he could have passed a medical “everywhere in the world”. “This is the truth,” the agent swore.
And so Dwamena went on to sign a year and a half contract with Egnatia — later extended to two years — and began life in the city of Kavaje, where he moved to with his wife, Ama.
On the pitch, the goals poured in. Dwamena would go on to score 12 goals in 24 games in just half the season. He was playing well and he seemed healthy, too. He had had three medical checks since signing with Egnatia, with all of them failing to flag any potential issues.
The next season, which began in August 2023, saw him continue to flourish. Dwamena was made captain of the team, and became a cult hero in the city of Rrogozhine. He scored nine goals in 11 league games, at the time the highest in the league, propelling his team to the top of the table.
Skender Alushaj, a veteran barber in the city, who has been supporting Egnatia for 50 years, and who took care of Dwamena’s hair, called Dwamena a “symbol” for the people. “He was a man with a big heart,” Alushaj observed.
But this was a heart that was troubled, too — literally.
On Thursday, November 9, 2023, Dwamena called his junior sister, Yvonne, and told her he had a game on Saturday November 11. It was going to be a game between Egnatia and their title rivals Partizani — a big game. According to Yvonne, Dwamena usually did not speak to his family a day before games because he wanted to use that period to relax.
Yvonne relayed the message to their mother, Madam Ruby. “Maa, Nana Kwame (as his family affectionately referred to him as) says he has a game on Saturday,” Yvonne announced. “Oh okay,” came the response from their mother. “Do tell him that we are strongly behind him in prayers.”
There was no game Dwamena played in that Madam Ruby did not know about. In Ghana, there wasn’t a means of watching Albanian league games, so Madam Ruby would resort to video calls with her son, sometimes from the dressing room after games, to catch up. Even via video call, Madam Ruby would sometimes ask him to kneel for her to pray for him. “We don’t joke with our faith at all,” she would later say in that TV interview with Captain Smart.
On Saturday afternoon, Madam Ruby called Yvonne. “Check social media, please!” she said in a frantic panic. “I’m hearing some things about Nana Kwame and I don’t want to believe it!”
Trembling, Yvonne recalled going unto Facebook and typing in the search bar: “Updates on Raphael Dwamena”.
The updates she saw almost gave her a heart attack.
“I couldn’t control my tears,” Yvonne remembered.
It was all over: BBC, CNN, DW, AP, FOX, Sky, Daily Mail, Olympic Channel et al.
A Ghanaian footballer had died in Albania. His name was Raphael Dwamena. He was 28-years-old.
The sad event is now familiar to most who saw the trending video online.
In the 24th minute of Egnatia’s game against Partizani, Dwamena collapsed, face-down, on the pitch at the Demrozi Stadium.
It was sudden. Serious. The referee, like players from both teams, urgently sped towards him. Some of Dwamena’s teammates immediately rolled him over. Medics from the bench arrived in a flash. An ambulance pulled up within seconds. A player was seen avoiding the scene, his hands on his head. It was all grave. Heavy. Scary. A hard watch. Everyone knew something tragic had happened.
Dwamena was rushed to the Kavaje hospital, about 20 minutes away. He didn’t make it. He was confirmed dead even before getting there. Doctors said he had arrived “without breathing” and “without cardiac activity”.
What had happened?
It was simple. Dwamena’s heart had failed, and there was no defibrillator to shock him back to life.
To be fair, it had been Dwamena’s wish — not to die, per se, but to have his fate determined without that small piece of medical intervention called the defibrillator. The only intervention he trusted was divine intervention.
Which begs the question: had divine intervention failed him? Dwamena would have disagreed. For him, believe it or not, divine intervention in this case was he dying. Things had happened exactly how God wanted them to, he would have conceded.
Cardiologist Antonio Asso, who had lost contact with Dwamena after the latter moved from Spain to Denmark, said, upon hearing the news, that Dwamena — a “great a noble boy” — had died due to a “respectable personal decision” to remove the defibrillator in 2022.
“If the defibrillator had not been explanted,” he told Spanish outlet Sport, “Raphael would still be alive.”
“Death forewarned!” wrote well-known Albanian doctor Skender Brataj. “Raphael Dwamena was not supposed to play football. The doctors informed him several times. God forgave him twice!”
Tributes flooded in from the footballing world — from players, managers, fans, federations and former clubs.
The GFA paid tribute to Dwamena, whose short stint with the Black Stars — before his heart issues began — saw him score two goals in nine caps. “He served his country well and showed class anytime he represented Ghana,” said GFA President Kurt Okraku. “This news is hard to take.”
Meanwhile, Dwamena’s family was inconsolable. “He was my strength,” his mother sobbed. “My strength…is gone.”
“We’ve been crying and wailing since we heard the news,” said his father, Frederick Kwabena Dwamena. “But we trust in the Lord to keep us strong.”
The same Lord, it seemed, was both the protagonist and antagonist in the tragic tale of Raphael Dwamena.
