"No trace of alcohol." Tommaso Giulini , president of Cagliari, and Stefania Milia , director of the intensive care unit at the AOU hospital in Sassari, immediately cleared the field of any conjecture about what happened to the rossoblu player, Yael Trepy, who semi-drowned last Sunday in a villa in Porto Cervo .
At this evening's press conference at Palazzo Bompiani, on Viale San Pietro in Sassari, they reassured the 20-year-old Frenchman about his condition, ruling out any neurological deficit and announcing that he will soon leave the intensive care unit .
Giulini recounted the incident, verified by Cagliari CEO Carlo Catte, who visited the scene: "Yael," he explained, " had slept in the sun for two hours. Then, dizzy from the heat, he went into the pool and slipped into the deep end. No traces of any substance were found in his body ."
"He was seen on the bottom," he added, "face down, by a girl who raised the alarm and a player immediately dived in to bring him to the surface ."
The rest was done by the timely rescue workers who, as Milia, assisted by AOU General Director Serafinangelo Ponti, arrived on the scene and removed a large amount of water. This was a providential intervention because "the boy was severely hypoxemic."
Respiratory function was supported until yesterday when the young man showed great signs of improvement: «The first words he said - Milia reported - were to correct the way I pronounced his name» .
The footballer didn't remember anything when he woke up and asked his mother if he had been in a car accident .
Giulini, visibly moved, described the episode as the most difficult of his 13 years as president ("Spending three days like this thinking about what could have happened because of such a stupid incident...") and thanked AOU and Areus, also on behalf of Trepy's mother and all Cagliari fans, for "the great example of professionalism and competence."
I learned that the rescue team arrived by helicopter less than five minutes after the incident . If they had arrived a quarter of an hour, twenty minutes later, to remove all that water from his lungs… the boy probably wouldn't be here today. The rescuers didn't know—and I had confirmation of this from those who were there—that it was a footballer, so it could have been anyone in that situation. And then I was immediately told by the Cagliari football team doctors that the situation was truly dire.
Regarding the next steps, Milia explained: "Regarding the recovery timeline, I can say that the boy will move from the Intensive Care Unit to a unit more suited to his condition . We will evaluate this shortly with Dr. Carlo Pinna Parpaglia. As for what happens after that, such as his fitness for sports, this phase will not concern this facility and will be assessed by other specialists ."