Penalty Shootouts Can Cause Heart Attacks!!!

According to British scientists, the risk of a heart attack increases for people who watch soccer penalty shoot-outs.

Soccer more commonly known as football is a game with the biggest audience in the world. No matter which country you belong to, you can always find a football enthusiast in a park near you. But when it comes to England the case becomes even more vivacious.

Football is the most watched sport in England with millions of diehard fans supporting their club or the national team. The significance of football can be assessed by analyzing the study published by British Medical Journal which carried out an experiment in which they counted the admissions before, during, and after the 1998 world cup match between England and Argentina. The penalty shoot-out of the match ended in the elimination of England from the World Cup and caused 25 percent of the watchers to suffer from a heart attack! The audience of the match was a whopping 24 million, and reports suggest that many people just couldn’t bear the stress and suspense of the penalty shoot-outs. The heart attacks were more common among men than women.

Professor Carroll, a contributor in the study, went as far as suggesting to football authorities that penalty shoot-outs should not be the method to decide a deadlocked match.

He said:

“The majority of football fans I know do not like penalty shoot-outs, and so given there is provisional health evidence that they might not be the greatest thing either, perhaps they ought to look for an alternative solution.”