A cardiothoracic surgeon summoned Mr and Mrs Toth into his office, sat them down, and broke the news. Their firstborn had a dextro-transposition of the great arteries. His pulmonary artery was where his aorta one should have been and vice-versa. Oxygen wasn\u2019t getting to his heart. The horror on their faces was soon relaxed \u2013 marginally and momentarily. The medic explained that a tried-and-trusted surgery existed. It would enable their son to lead a normal life \u2013 with one aftereffect: he wouldn\u2019t be able to play sport. That would have been music to the ears of most parents, but the Toths aren\u2019t most parents. Sport, or football in particular, was like oxygen to them. Gyorgy Toth played in goal for the Magical Magyars alongside Ferenc Puskas and Sandor Kocsis. His son Zoltan, another goalkeeper, was also capped by Hungary before becoming a US indoor soccer Hall of Famer, the San Diego Sockers going as far as to retire his jersey. Zoltan was sure that a child he bore wouldn\u2019t ever be happy without \u2018The Beautiful Game\u2019. \u201cWhat\u2019s the alternative?” he asked. The doctor paused and then, almost begrudgingly, informed them of a new surgery. It was riskier, but the risk, at least for the Toths, outweighed the reward: it would, if successful, enable Chris to play sport. They went for it. \u201cI\u2019m really, really relived they made that decision,\u201d Chris told FIFA 34 years later. \u201cI don\u2019t think I could have ever been happy without soccer.\u201d Chris didn\u2019t grow up protecting nets like Gyorgy and Zoltan, but rippling them like his idol, Franceso Totti. He was tipped for a big future playing 11-a-side or on the indoor soccer circuit. Then disaster struck. Another heart problem prompted doctors to tell him, categorically, that he would have to stop trying emulate \u2018The Eighth King of Rome\u2019. The spin-off this time was that, if he wanted, he could play between the sticks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A cardiothoracic surgeon summoned Mr and Mrs Toth into his office, sat them down, and broke the news. Their firstborn had a dextro-transposition of the great arteries. His pulmonary artery was where his aorta one should have been and vice-versa. Oxygen wasn\u2019t getting to his heart. The horror on their faces was soon relaxed \u2013 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":877212,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20966],"tags":[9648,26798],"class_list":["post-877211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fifa-news","tag-fifa","tag-ipna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/877211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=877211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/877211\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/877212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=877211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=877211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=877211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}