15-year-old soccer player dies after head injury in fight with French team at international youth tournament

A 15-year-old soccer player from a Berlin club died today of a serious head injury as a result of a fight with players from a French team in an international youth tournament, German police announced. Local police said in a statement that the boy “died in hospital as a result of a serious brain injury” after being struck in the head in an altercation in Frankfurt on Sunday. She added that a 16-year-old player from the French team was arrested after the fight and is still in detention.

The quarrel occurred after the final whistle in a match between the victim’s team, GFC Berlin, and the French second-division team, Metz. Police indicated that investigators are still looking into the “detailed sequence of events” that led to the young player’s injury. And the police had indicated in a separate statement on Tuesday that the victim appeared to have been hit “on the head or neck” before he “fell to the ground and had to be resuscitated.” A spokeswoman for the Frankfurt Public Prosecutor’s Office said that the victim, who was declared brain dead on Tuesday, was put on life support so that he could donate his organs.

For its part, the Metz club said yesterday that it was “deeply shocked” by the events of the tournament held in Frankfurt. The club confirmed that a player from the “Performance Programme”, a project that gives “young footballers, from all over the world, access to a high-level training structure”, is being held by the German authorities. He added that the suspected attacker “denied intentionally causing grievous bodily harm.” Tournament organizers also announced on Tuesday that they were shocked by the events, describing them as “incredibly sad”.