Lightning Strikes Yala FC Winger Safwan Awae During Golok Cup Match
The monsoon rain had been building all evening over Narathiwat. At Santiphap Stadium, in the Su-ngai Kolok district on Thailand’s southern border, they kept playing anyway.
Then the sky split.
A bolt of lightning tore into the pitch during a Golok Cup regional tournament match, striking 24-year-old winger Safwan Awae of Yala FC and leaving players and supporters frozen in horror before they sprinted toward him.
Within seconds, football’s routine chaos – shouts, instructions, the drum of the rain – turned into something else entirely.
A dream fulfilled, then gone in an instant
Awae, who had only signed for Thai League 3 side Yala FC the previous week, had stepped into this tournament riding the high of a long-held ambition finally realised. Reports from the club’s camp described his move to Yala as a lifelong goal, the kind of local football story that usually ends with a slow, hard-earned rise.
He never got the chance to write the next chapter.
As the storm intensified, the match continued into a heavy downpour. A sudden flash, a crack, and play stopped immediately as players collapsed to the ground or staggered away in shock. Awae lay stricken where the lightning had hit.
Footage from Santiphap Stadium shows a frantic, human scramble: teammates, opponents, and spectators racing across the soaked turf, some trying to shield Awae from the relentless rain while others attempted to revive him. There was no time to process what had happened, only to react.
Emergency services arrived and rushed him to hospital in critical condition. The fight to save him did not succeed. On Tuesday, August 5, 2026, Awae was pronounced dead. Local police chief Thun Sirikhunt later confirmed he had died from his injuries.
Twelve more players injured
The lightning strike did not spare the others on the field. Twelve players suffered burns of varying severity in the blast of electricity that tore through the wet surface.
Among the injured was 22-year-old Malaysian footballer Alif Ezzahan Zulkifli, one of several players taken to Sungai Kolok Hospital for treatment. Details of the full extent of their injuries have not yet been made public, but the images from the ground – men dazed, scorched, and soaked – underline how narrow the line was between survival and catastrophe.
What should have been a routine regional cup tie became one of the most shocking stadium incidents in recent Thai football memory.
Grief for club, community and country
For Yala FC, the loss cuts deep. A club accustomed to the grind of Thailand’s lower leagues now finds itself at the centre of a tragedy that stretches far beyond football.
In a statement on their official page, Yala FC expressed their profound condolences to Awae’s family, acknowledging the scale of the loss for those closest to him and for a squad that had only just welcomed him into their dressing room.
The Football Association of Thailand (FAT) also moved quickly to respond, issuing a formal message that it “shares the grief with the family, friends and the club during this difficult time.” It was a rare moment where the national game paused, united not by a title race or a cup final, but by a sense of collective shock.
The questions that follow such an event – about weather protocols, stadium safety, and decisions to continue play in a monsoon downpour – will come. For now, the dominant feeling around Narathiwat and Yala is raw mourning.
A brutal week for the global grassroots game
The news from Thailand lands in a week already stained by another tragedy at the grassroots level of the sport.
In Brazil, teenager Micael Leandro da Silva was shot dead shortly after completing an amateur football tournament in Maceio, as reported by TUKO.co.ke. His father spoke of a family “torn apart by two criminals who came and shot my son in the back,” a stark, devastating picture of how quickly joy on a pitch can give way to violence off it.
Different continents. Different circumstances. The same cruel thread: young players, still at the beginning of their stories, taken from the game and from their families in moments that defy sense.
In Narathiwat, the Santiphap Stadium turf will dry. The Golok Cup will, at some point, resume or return. Yala FC will play again.
But for those who watched lightning strike in the middle of a match, and for a club that lost a winger who had only just pulled on their shirt, the question now is not when football comes back.
It’s how it will ever feel the same.
