FIFA delivered what amounted to a rebuke to Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho on Thursday amid reports that he has banned the club’s first team doctor Eva Carneiro following her treatment of an injured player in a Premier League match.
FIFA chief medical officer Jiri Dvorak said that managers had no right to tell their medical staff whether they should go onto the pitch to treat a player and that ultimately the doctor was in charge of what happened on the pitch.
Carneiro and Chelsea physiotherapist Jon Fearn came on to treat Eden Hazard in added time of Chelsea’s Premier League game against Swansea City on Saturday last week.
It left Mourinho furious that the player then had to leave the field for treatment with Chelsea already reduced to 10 men following an earlier red card for goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois.
Although both the referee and Hazard beckoned on the doctor, Mourinho said afterward he believed the player was not seriously injured and called his medical staff “impulsive and naive” in a TV interview.
While Chelsea have not commented, reports in the British media say he has subsequently banned Carneiro from the bench, training sessions and the team hotel.
Yet Dvorak told Sky Sports that he fully backed the doctor’s actions.
Asked how much say the manager should have if a player is injured, Dvorak said: “In medical aspects, in medical diagnosis, the manager has nothing to say.”
“This is our professional law and our ethical duty to look after the players’ health,” he said.
Asked if the manager could ever tell the medical team not to enter the field, Dvorak said: “I can’t see such a situation and we have to defend the position of the doctor.”
“Everyone involved has to respect the fact the doctor is in charge,” Dvorak added.
“I don’t want to interfere with the club as such, but I would endorse clearly what the team doctor and the physiotherapist did. When they were asked, they had to come on to the pitch,” he said.
Dvorak said that the doctor had to be on the bench to observe the game and was allowed on the field even without the referee’s permission if they saw a player suffer a suspected cardiac arrest or a head injury, including concussion.
“That is the sole decision of the doctor and we at FIFA will always endorse that,” he added.
The British Association of Sport and Exercise Medicine said it supported the stance taken by the Premier League Doctors Group on Wednesday and called for a full review of the events at the game.
This was “essential to avoid any unnecessary risk to players in the future,” it said.
“Nothing takes precedence over the health and well-being of athletes,” the association said in a statement. “And whoever decides a player needs help, medical staff have an absolute obligation to fully assess the athlete until satisfied they are fit to continue participation.”
It added that “all those involved in football have a moral obligation to assist medical staff to the best of their ability to minimize any risk of serious harm to players.”
Mourinho’s behavior toward the Gibraltar-born Carneiro was “absolutely appalling,” former Liverpool head of sports science Peter Brukner told Talksport radio on Wednesday.
The Premier League Doctors Group said in their statement that removing the doctor from the team bench would be “unjust in the extreme,” because she was doing her job properly.
Chelsea have refused to comment on the matter, but Mourinho was expected to address it when in at his weekly press conference yesterday.
Additional reporting by AFP
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
Rafael Nadal on Wednesday said the upcoming French Open would be the moment to “give everything and die” on the court after his comeback from injury in Barcelona was curtailed by Alex de Minaur. The 22-time Grand Slam title winner, back playing this week after three months on the sidelines, battled well, but eventually crumbled 7-5, 6-1 against the world No. 11 from Australia in the second round. Nadal, 37, who missed virtually all of last season, is hoping to compete at the French Open next month where he is the record 14-time champion. The Spaniard said the clash with De Minaur was
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but