A MAN’S life was saved by his friends when he collapsed on a Keighley football pitch.

Waseem Aslam suffered a cardiac arrest during a match at Marley Activities and Coaching Centre.

His pals immediately started giving CPR and continued until paramedics arrived.

Waseem, 43, praises his friends for “never giving-up on him”.

Medical staff said it was “a miracle” he had survived.

Close friend Rizwan Malik recalled the dramatic moment Waseem collapsed.

“We all went running across – he didn’t have a pulse,” he said.

“Five of us started giving him CPR. It seemed like we were doing it forever.

“We just had to keep a clear head. The longer we were doing it, the less likely it seemed that we were going to get him back. When the paramedics turned-up, they put a heart monitor on him and it was a flatline, that is when I just broke down and thought we had lost him. They got the defibrillator out, shocked him a couple of times and thankfully got a pulse.

“At the time, it didn’t really sink in that we did anything extraordinary, it was on the way out the paramedics told us you have just saved his life.”

When Waseem finally awoke at 8am the next morning in Leeds General Infirmary’s special heart unit, he was told he had suffered a cardiac arrest.

He said: “Both the ambulance service and the doctors at the ICU said it was a miracle. Massive thanks need to go to my friends, who didn’t give-up on me. I got told they rotated in gaining instructions on the phone, giving me mouth-to-mouth and pumping my chest. They just went into SOS mode and kept me going. The first time the paramedics zapped me I flatlined and they were going to call it but my friends begged them to give it one more try. Every day is like a bonus now, I am not supposed to be alive. I am here because of my friends.”

Tribute is paid to the friends – Rizwan, Tariq Hussain, Khalid Hussain, Mohammad Sultan and Fazal Rehman – by Waseem’s wife, Siama, who describes her husband as the “backbone of the family”. The couple have two daughters – Hafsha, 16, and Hanna, nine.

Siama said: “Words will never be able to express the gratitude and appreciation I have for his friends, who never gave-up on him. They brought back to life the children’s daddy and my husband. Those men will be heroes until the day I die.”

Surgeons have discovered that one of Waseem’s two blocked arteries can’t have a stent installed.

“The alternative is open heart surgery – which is a double-bypass of the arteries,” said Waseem. “But I have rib fractures and I'm told I am not ready for it yet.”