On May 27, after Paris Saint-Germain sealed the Ligue 1 title on a Saturday night, many of the team’s players set off to celebrate.
Some went together to Monaco, where the Formula 1 Grand Prix was to take place the next day. Substitute goalkeeper Sergio Rico flew via private plane to the south of Spain.
Rico was headed for El Rocio, a tiny Andalusian hamlet that hosts one of Spain’s biggest religious festivals. Hours after arriving, a tragic accident left him fighting for his life. He suffered major head and neck injuries after he was trampled by a horse.
Rico spent 36 days in intensive care. He was in a coma for 19 days. His family and friends endured an agonising wait for signs he would survive.
Here, informed by witnesses to the accident and close family members, is the full story of his miraculous survival.
Every year, the village of El Rocio welcomes Catholic pilgrims from far and wide. For just a few days, this small settlement of no more than 1,500 inhabitants among the marshlands of the Guadalquivir river is entirely transformed. It is estimated that a million people visited over the last weekend in May.
It is a tradition that has been going on for centuries, with many pilgrims travelling from across Spain by donkey or on horseback, camping out or even sleeping rough on their way. This area of the country has a deep equestrian heritage and many locals are proud of the history of its horses figuring prominently in the conquest of the Americas.
During the religious festival, many of El Rocio’s houses are open to everyone, with food and drink offered freely in the streets. It is almost impossible to refuse an invitation of a glass of wine or sherry, a good local ham or a bowl of fresh salmorejo, a cold soup similar to gazpacho.
The weekend climaxes with a procession that sees a painted wooden statue of the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus carried along El Rocio’s dusty dirt roads. The statue, known as the Blanca Paloma (White Dove), is taken out of the local church along with the incredibly heavy and ornate altar on which it sits and requires an astonishing collective effort to lift it.
The church (Santuario de Nuestra Senora del Rocio) and its surrounding streets are packed with people desperate to get close enough to touch the statue. They gather tightly in a fervour that often causes injury, with national TV broadcasting pictures from the scene. Many hands reach out towards the statue, some even holding up their young babies above the crowds in the hope of receiving a blessing.
Many of the pilgrims are members of one of the 127 religious brotherhoods unique to this area and occasion. Rico, a practising Catholic, is a member of The Brotherhood of Redemption. The 29-year-old, who also played for Fulham, was born in Seville, about an hour’s drive away, and has further family ties to El Rocio through his wife.
According to those close to Rico, he has made the pilgrimage many times but was particularly desperate to go this year. Two years ago, his father passed away, something that affected him deeply. The pilgrimage represents a chance to pray for the deceased.
A close friend of Rico’s told The Athletic that, earlier in the previous week, he had made a special request to be given extra time off to go to El Rocio after PSG’s match against Strasbourg on May 27. This request was not approved, but the club’s stance relaxed after a 1-1 draw saw them seal the Ligue 1 title.
Seville airport was Rico’s preferred option, but with no flights available, he instead flew to Malaga, where a car was waiting to drive him the three hours to his destination.
Rico arrived in El Rocio at 5am on Sunday, May 28. He headed straight to visit friends at their home in the village while his wife, who is also a regular at the festival and like Rico has a passion for horses, decided to rest.
This is what happened next, according to the findings of a local police report seen by The Athletic, the words of Rico’s friends who were with him, and other members of the village who were close by when the accident happened.
It was before 7am when Rico arrived at a friend’s house having ridden there on horseback. He dismounted, left the horse outside and entered his friend’s home.
According to the report filed by local police, Rico left the house and returned to the horse sometime after 8am. Shortly afterwards, a donkey that was tied up across the street suddenly became so agitated that it broke free. The commotion as it ran off, pulling a cart behind it, caused Rico’s horse to rear up on its hind legs and he is believed to have fallen. As its front hooves came down, Rico was struck on his head and neck. His spinal cord was not damaged but doctors later said that if the injury was half a centimetre deeper, he would have died instantly.
Rico was knocked unconscious by the blow and, according to those who were with him, over half an hour passed before emergency services arrived. As Rico lay on the ground, two passers-by who happened to be nurses helped administer some first aid.
At 8:15am, the Andalusian emergency services received a call about “a rider who had fallen from his horse”, as they later described in a statement. The local police report said a doctor first arrived in a Land Rover, followed by an ambulance.
What caused the animals to become agitated is still not totally clear. The police report said it was unable to conclude what had happened exactly and also noted that it was unable to base its findings on eyewitness accounts, relying instead on the testimony of those who were close by and observed events either leading up to or following Rico’s accident.
According to the statement from the Guardia Civil who initially went to the scene “the mule when frightened has broken the mooring post and went out along with the charret (the cart) impacting with the truck”.
The television channel Antena 3 also reported on May 31 that “the mules that were dragging it (the cart) managed to get free and started to run because of the noise caused by a truck collecting rubbish”.
The judicial police in Aracena who are in charge of proceedings did not interrogate the occupants of the rubbish truck. Likewise two witnesses were not required to give a statement to the investigating team after being told by telephone, “that they had not witnessed how the events had occurred, and were unable to provide any information in this respect”.
Because of the popularity of the El Rocio religious festival, two temporary operating theatres had been set up by local authorities close to the village. However, the decision was taken to transfer Rico by helicopter to Seville, to the Virgen del Rocio Hospital, where he arrived at 10am already sedated. This was already seen as progress — when the police first arrived, they assumed Rico was dead.
Doctors were only concerned with saving his life.
Rico was admitted to the intensive care unit, where he was sedated, intubated and stabilised.
There were no major marks or scratches, “he was unblemished”, family members recall, and his hands were tied so that the intubation would not be removed.
By then, the Andalusian press — the first was the daily El Mira — was already beginning to share the news following the SAS (the Andalusian emergency service) announcement, and while everyone in El Rocio was praying to the Virgin for the PSG goalkeeper, Rico’s family, close friends and agents were beginning to arrive at the hospital in the early afternoon.
Many of his PSG team-mates were also calling the family worried about what they were hearing, including Sergio Ramos, a Seville native and whose wife is also a regular at the festival. They all wanted to see Rico but were unable to due to him being unconscious and in ICU.
Kylian Mbappe dedicated the best player award to his team-mate at the UNFP gala: “I want to think first of Sergio Rico. There are more important things than football. We are all with him.”
Mbappe holds up Rico’s jersey after scoring for PSG (Photo: Franck Fife/AFP via Getty Images)
Rico’s family were in contact with Luis Campos, PSG’s sporting director, Nasser Al-Khelaifi, PSG’s president, and the club’s doctor, with the club suspending an event for the PSG Foundation in light of the news. Campos and Al-Khelaifi planned to travel to Seville but, due to the player’s condition, they preferred to give space to the family. The same was felt by Marco Verratti and Marquinhos, who wanted to come as representatives of the squad.
On Monday morning, the hospital made its first statement, a terse announcement acknowledging several severe injuries including brain trauma. No further details were offered on the advice of the medical team and the family avoided giving more information than necessary.
The first 72 hours were going to be crucial and they did not want to jump to conclusions.
That same morning, Pepe Castro, the president of Sevilla, his former team, who has a great relationship with Rico’s family because his daughter is a friend of Alba Silva, Rico’s wife, came to the hospital to visit him and spent several hours with the family, where he promised to do something special before the Europa League final in Warsaw. In the meantime, Carlos Soler, Rico’s team-mate at PSG, arrived and stayed for many hours with the family.
Alba posted her first statement on Instagram on Tuesday, in which she referred to Rico and opened up to the world: “Don’t leave me alone my love because I swear I can’t, and I don’t know how to live without you. We are waiting for you my life, we love you so much.”
The diagnosis was ever-changing, with his life still in danger, and on top of that there was pneumonia, due to intubation — a frequent issue in these cases — and fever.
More tests were to come and more setbacks, but Rico continued to fight.
“There’s a phrase they tell you when you go into ICU: two steps forward, one step back. No matter how many times you hear it, it doesn’t sink in until it happens. When a patient is in ICU, they are monitored. They gave me a pass when I entered the ICU that was valid until 30 June and it seemed like it would last indefinitely,” Rico’s entourage tells The Athletic.
“The relatives of the other ICU patients said they had been there for 20 days, others for 25 days and it seemed crazy to me. ICU puts you in your place — relatives see something as simple as a person blinking as a victory — everything has a different meaning. The doctor arrives and you know to expect anything. But in the end, it’s just that: two steps forward, one step back.”
In the following days, Rico underwent more scans that showed no major signs of concern. On the Friday of that first week in the ICU, sedation was stopped, the fever disappeared and it seemed everything was close to being over. It was a small miracle. And yet, it was decided to remain calm. He would still have to be sedated again.
In the meantime, more gestures of support from PSG, Real Madrid and Mallorca were seen on the last day of La Liga.
“Keep going, Sergio Rico,” it said on the players’ white shirts during the warm-up.
Lionel Messi wearing an #AnimoSergioRico shirt (Photo: Ian MacNicol/Getty Images)
But as the days went by, the judicial police had taken testimony from eyewitnesses to the accident and a judge had decided there was no evidence of criminality or anything untoward, which helped reassure Rico’s entourage.
The hospital continued to issue medical reports, though the frequency dropped, only communicating significant developments. At this point, after almost three weeks in the ICU, it looked like there was light at the end of the tunnel for Rico.
As a result of the blow, the goalkeeper had many complications, but Dr Marin, a critical care doctor, and other expert hands provided incredible care.
Rico lost more than 20kg, with every week in the ICU resulting in approximately a 30% loss of muscle capacity.
All efforts were just focused on getting Rico back to having a normal life.
With no neurological problems, the PSG player became aware of his surroundings, started to breathe on his own and began to make gestures and respond to stimulation.
No longer sedated, Rico was beginning to feel pain and had started to work on his breathing and stretching with the doctor just four weeks after his brutal accident. Rico looked at the clock as if to ask how long he had been in that room, but his relatives didn’t want to upset him and answered vaguely.
Rico also started to laugh with his eyes, even when he could not speak, and began to work on his recovery on his own, even when the staff were not there.
“You can’t see how hard he squeezes his hand,” explained the people around him at the time, excited by his miraculous recovery.
Rico still tired easily and had a lot of mucus in one of his lungs, delaying his release from the ICU. His release was long awaited by both his family and PSG, with the club finally planning a trip to see him with Luis Campos and the club’s doctor; the club’s actions were appreciated by the family.
Before the accident, Rico was set to renew his contract for three more seasons, plus the option of a further year, until 2028.
At first, Rico spoke in a faint voice and got frustrated when he was not understood, but his voice has recovered and he has seen all the gestures of affection from the public, PSG and his former clubs.
“It may sound like a cliche, but there is not a single person who speaks ill of Sergio. He is a bit shy, but he has no malice and anyone who has had three or four conversations with him has wanted to come and see him — even a person who did a renovation on his house. At PSG, they sent us a message which was: the whole dressing room loves him,” Rico’s camp tells The Athletic.
Finally, after more than five weeks in the ICU, Sergio Rico was transferred to the hospital ward, the expectation being that he would be able to leave hospital in approximately two weeks. Before he leaves the hospital, he will have to undergo a final CAT scan.
Pending satisfactory results from the scan, Rico will recover during the first few months at his new home in Seville. A return to the pitch is unlikely, but after his miraculous recovery, nobody is able to rule anything out.
(Top photo: Getty Images; design: Sam Richardson)
