[NougatRillettes]

The likely implied thought here is that it would be linked to the Covid vaccines. However, I believe the most likely explanation is provided by this citation:

> To find out how many deaths actually occurred during the last two decades among FIFA players (2001-2020), we used Wikipedia - "List of association footballers who died while playing". To know how many cases occurred in 2021, we used the list collected by us in "Real-Time News" (which includes the cases noted in Wikipedia for 2021).

There is an obvious sampling bias, and they likely collected much more cases for 2021 than for other years. Looking at mortality statistics by cause at nation level would be much more rigorous.

[beaned]

Is it possible to determine by comparing to an unvaccinated control group or is vaccination a requirement for play?