Not Dead Yet: A Soccer Team Held a Moment of Silence for Player Who Was Still Alive

TalkSport - A Bulgarian first-division team held a minute's silence for a former player... only to later discover he's still alive.

Arda Kardzhali made the shocking gaffe ahead of facing traditional Bulgarian giants Levski Sofia in the top flight on Sunday.

Both teams gathered at the centre circle and bowed their heads to remember the home team’s club legend, Petko Ganchev.

A minute’s silence was held for the 78-year-old, who was reportedly out in town getting some work done.

The crowd nobly joined in too, and everything appeared to be happening as usual.

However, on the hour mark, Arda incredibly put out a club statement that revealed some bizarre news.

It read: "The management of PFC Arda would like to express a huge apology to the former Arda player Petko Ganchev and his relatives after the club received wrong information about his death.

"We wish Petko Ganchev many more years of good health and to enjoy the success of Arda."

Personally, I would love to be mistakenly killed by the internet. Or a news station. Or my former Bulgarian soccer club. Not "killed killed". I don't want 5G to give me surprise terminal cancer, or be mistakenly run over by a news van, or be run over by Arda Kardzhali's team bus. But for someone to be fed bad information and mistakenly announce to the world that I am dead... through no doing of my own... I'm struggling to see how that wouldn't be awesome. 

I understand that for a brief time it would suck immensely for a handful of people closest to me. It might even cause them a bit a trauma. At least I would hope so. But that's a small price to pay. As long as no one is so distraught that they throw themselves off the NYC suicide vessel, for every friend and family member devastated by my passing, that's one "Guess what bitch? I'm still alive!" phone call I get to make. What amazing phone calls those would be. Think about how satisfying it is to simply break news to someone? Now imagine the news is that you've come back to life. Each phone call would be an ego boosting adrenaline rush the likes of which only a select few people in history have ever had the privilege of experiencing. And perhaps most importantly, there's no more surefire way to make people appreciate you than by them briefly thinking they've lost you forever. 

Once you've informed everybody in your life who matters that you're not actually dead, then you move on to your life's tertiary characters. Imagine showing up at a party and blowing everyone's minds. Throw a coffin in the back of a pickup truck, have your friend pull up to the party blasting The Undertaker's intro music, rise up out of the coffin, chug a beer, the crowd goes nuts. Then of course there's your enemies. At bare minimum you have to haunt at least one person. Get some professional makeup done to ghostify, or zombify yourself, and scare the living shit out of your most hated adversary. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Having the world think you're dead opens up a can of endless diabolical possibilities. 

Obviously there are some risks involved. The main one being it's very possible that you've vastly overestimated how loved and appreciated you are by your friends and family. It's possible you come to the extremely harsh realization that you were a mere speck on the radar in the lives of your peers. You'll quickly see that life will go on perfectly fine without you. Being able to see exactly how people would react to your death could end up fucking with your head a bit if the reaction isn't quite what you expected. But regardless of any potential negatives, being mistakenly "killed off" by the world is too unique of an opportunity to pass up on. Only a handful of people in the history of time have ever had the chance to experience it. You would be doing the world a disservice if you didn't take the opportunity and somehow use it for your own egotistical gain.

I think it should go without saying that if you orchestrate your death yourself, that makes you an asshole. It makes you one of the biggest assholes in the world. That's a severely fucked up thing to do to people. But if you're pronounced dead through zero fault of your own... that's a different story. That's somebody doing something bad to you. How you choose to reveal to the world that you're still alive is up to you.

Anyways, I'm happy to hear Bulgarian club soccer legend Petko Ganchev is still alive and well. I would post his highlights, but I can't find them anywhere on the internet. Which makes me question his Bulgarian soccer legend status a bit. But he was good enough for a moment of silence at a sporting event. Which is more than most people will be able to say when they pass. 

P.S. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Pete Frates, longtime Stoolie who inspired the famous ALS Ice Bucket Challenge movement that raised over $200M to fight the disease. Unfortunately Pete passed away at the end of 2019. But earlier that year, some asshole called Mike Barnacle tried to declare him dead when he was very much still alive. In response, Pete posted a pretty sick, "still not dead" response on Twitter. That was pretty bad ass... Shoutout Pete Frates.