David Ginola admits he still feels lucky to be alive after his massive heart attack last year.
The former Spurs and Newcastle winger was clinically dead for nine minutes after collapsing suddenly at a charity game in May 2016.
He’d swallowed his tongue, stopped breathing and was only revived after CPR and the use of a defibrillator.
Ex-Spurs coach Ugo Ehiogu died suddenly from a heart attack at the club’s training ground earlier this year. Former Cameroon international Marc-Vivian Foe also passed away on the pitch during a Confederations Cup game in 2003.
Ginola said: “We’ve seen in the past with Foe and Ugo Ehiogu - being a sportsman doesn’t necessarily help you.”
Speaking to radio station Talksport, the Frenchman has urged fans to checks to ensure they are not complacent about their health.
He said: “If you 40, 45 or 50 the best advice I can give you is to have a check-up. You always think you are indestructible but life is not like that.
"I had no warning at all. The day that it happened I was feeling so great. It was a beautiful day. You never know, things can happen just like that.
“This is why everyone should have a check up. You can have a great life in the next 20 years as well. Every single one of us must think about the people that love us and for the sake of their thoughts we should do something.
“The surgeons said to me: ‘David, do you know what? Nine out of people die with your problem. It is a miracle so you have to embrace life every day. It’s a massive opportunity that God gives you to have a second chance at your life.’”
Ginola’s heart attack came at the home of a friend, Jean Stephane Camerini, in the Mandelieu region of France.
Ginola said: “I was playing a football game with some of my mates in the south of France. We’d had a lovely lunch and we’d planned to play a very friendly game on a small pitch.
“In the second half of the game I fell on the floor and I was dead. I can’t remember it because it was just sudden.
“My mates told me that I suddenly fell on the floor and I was swallowing my tongue. So they called the ambulance people and they said: ‘Concentrate on the heart.’”
Ginola’s friend, footballer Frederic Mendy, is credited with performing CPR on him until an air ambulance crew were able to treat him with a defibrillator.
He added: “He pumped my chest for nine minutes. So I was dead for nine minutes.
“I was waiting for the ambulance to arrive. The girl shocked me once, twice, three times. She looked at my friends and said: ‘Your friend is dead.’
“It wasn’t that they wanted to give up but she said that after three times most of the time it (the heart) doesn’t go back (restart).
“She tried another fourth and fifth time and on the fifth time they got a beat. My heart, they got a pulse. They took me to Monaco to the heart centre.
"All the nurses told me that they were just amazed by the force within me fighting to live.”
Ginola went on to have a six-hour quadruple bypass operation to clear his blocked arteries.
He now insists he has a new lease of life. He went on: “That’s obvious. I wasn’t supposed to be there for my kids. Everything now is about enjoying [life] and taking care of the people I love.”