Admittedly, we Americans don’t understand much about the game of soccer. The clock runs the wrong way. Time is added for no explicable reason. And there are never any cheerleaders. What gives, Mr. Beckham?

But this next rule is really perplexing. It appears that suffering a life-ending heart attack is against the rules. You see, recently, a 32-year-old Croatian soccer player named Goran Tunjic collapsed from a coronary in the 35th minute of a match. Thinking the player was merely taking a dive to draw a foul, the referee showed him a yellow card — a warning to behave the rest of the game.

Well, Goran behaved all right. After all, it’s sort of hard to commit any penalties when rigor mortis is setting in.

When the refs realized that Mr. Tunjic wasn’t faking his injury, it was too late.   He was rushed to a local hospital but could not be saved.

And while being dead might suck, at least Mr. Tunjic won’t have to play such a confusing game anymore.