Jean-Pierre Adams was born on March 10, 1948 and raised in Dakar until the age of 10, when he left his native Senegal on a pilgrimage to Montargis in the Loiret department alongside his grandmother, who was a devout Catholic.
He was enlisted at a local Catholic school, Saint-Louis de Montargis where he was adopted by a French couple shortly after his arrival in the country.
During his studies, Adams worked at a local rubber manufacturer and he started playing football at several local clubs in the Loiret area.
Adams started playing professionally with Entente BFN in 1967 as a striker where he was runner-up in the Championnat de France Amateur twice.
He played for Nimes from 1970-73 and for PSG from 1977-79 after joining from Nice.
On 15 June 1972, Adams made his debut for the France national team in an unofficial exhibition game against an African XI selected by the Confederation of African Football.
Adams’ last appearance occurred on September 1, 1976, in a friendly with Denmark and during his tenure with Les Bleus, he formed a stopper partnership with Marius Trésor which was dubbed La garde noire (black guard). In total, Adams made 22 appearances for France.
Adams and his wife Bernadette were married in April 1969 and had two sons, Laurent (born 1969) and Frédéric (1976).
Following a ligament rupture injury, he was hospitalised for surgery on March 17, 1982 at the Édouard Herriot Hospital in Lyon. After an error made by his anesthesiologist, he suffered a bronchospasm which starved his brain of oxygen and he slipped into a coma. But his wife, Bernadette remained and continued caring for him after refusing to opt for euthanasia.
Jean-Pierre Adams eventually died at 73, almost 40 years after falling into a coma.
