Respectfully - I don't agree with your statement.
When your heart stops beating, you die. He was obviously very lucky to have the medical personnel there to get his heart beating again. Hence bringing him "back to life". As I understand this happened twice, on the field and once in the ambulance. Have you ever been present, physically present when the paddles are applied to someone's chest to restart the heart? Did you get that last part, restart the heart. Yeah the young man was dead. Not for long but had the medical personnel not been there in time, he would have most certainly never had the heart restarted. So yeah he was dead.