How Tiote’s Chinese club failed to avoid Ivorian’s death

Beijing Enterprises, the Chinese club that Cheick Tiote played for before dying last week, had no emergency cardiac equipment to treat him, Sportsmail has reported.


Tiote, who collapsed and died in training, will be buried in his native Ivory Coast on Wednesday.

But a week after his death, the second-tier team in the Chinese League is yet to confirm the cause of his death or respond to claims that the medical facilities at the club’s training ground did not include a defibrillator.

It is understood that days before Tiote died, one official from his club expressed concern through the Chinese social media application WeChat, that the player had been affected by not eating or taking water between dawn and dusk, during the Ramadan fast. The post was later deleted.

“The medical conditions of the Chinese clubs are much worse than you imagine.

“Did Beijing Enterprises have defibrillators? A cast-iron no. They have two people in their medical staff. One is qualified but the other is known as a spraying physio, for spraying painkillers,” a source said.

Christopher Atkins, a player agent for RWMG Sports, who works on the Chinese end of transfers, said he had never seen a defibrillator at a training ground in the country’s second tier.

“I’ve never seen much by way of medical equipment.

“There are ECG and MRI scans, but how seriously they take them varies.’
Beijing Enterprises said in a statement that Tiote had been ‘rushed to hospital immediately’ when he collapsed but ‘all revival measures proved ineffective’.”