LONDON — For a small country, Belgium has a remarkable and growing influence on what soccer is today.
It
was a Belgian player, Jean-Marc Bosman, who 20 years ago convinced a
European court that players should have the right to be free agents at
the end of their contracts. It swung the balance of power from the clubs
to the players.
The
current group of Belgian players are very good indeed, and the country
is among the favorites to win the European Championship next year. Among
the stars are:
•Eden Hazard, the Chelsea winger who was voted the outstanding player in England’s Premier League last season.
•Kevin
De Bruyne, who was judged to be the best player in Germany’s Bundesliga
last year before he moved from Wolfsburg to Manchester City over the
summer in an $85 million deal.
•Thibaut Courtois, also of Chelsea, who is one of the finest young goalkeepers in the world.
•Vincent
Kompany, the captain of Manchester City and of the Belgian national
team, who, when healthy, is among the most imposing defenders of this
era.
Hazard and Kompany are at the center of an issue that should concern every professional player and official in the game today.
Both
represented Belgium last week as it qualified for the Euro 2016 finals,
and both were benched by their club’s coaches when they returned to the
Premier League over the weekend.
Hazard
was unwittingly the player at the center of the Chelsea storm in August
after he seemingly was injured during a game against Swansea City. As
he lay on the ground, the team’s doctor and physiotherapist ran to treat
him on the field near the end of a 2-2 draw. José Mourinho, the Chelsea
manager, was livid.
He
called his medical staff naïve and impulsive, and he asserted his right
to keep them off his bench. The doctor, Eva Carneiro, has not worked at
Chelsea since then and is considering her legal options.
FIFA, hamstrung by its own scandals, had to react. It did so in the middle of September when Michel D’Hooghe,
the Belgian doctor who heads the FIFA medical committee, led a meeting
that decided a new subcommittee was needed to establish rules over how
to care for players injured on the field.
D’Hooghe,
who early in his career helped save the life of a Dutch player who
suffered heart failure during a game in Bruges, Belgium, has spent his
life involved in sports medicine and FIFA politics.
After
he led the meeting that was called over how Mourinho effectively banned
the team doctor, D’Hooghe said, “The most important thing a doctor
faces is that where he or she has to judge on a medical issue, they
cannot hesitate.”
The
doctors, he said, must abide by their oath and intervene when a player
needs assistance. However, the subcommittee — which will take time to
organize, given how fractured FIFA is right now — will consult with
coaches and managers as it makes its decision.
“We
also need the voice of the coaches when we draw up this code,” D’Hooghe
said. “It is important to take into account the fact that the doctors
work as part of a group under the coach.”
Under the coach?
That
was a point of contention at Tottenham Hotspur two seasons ago when
goalkeeper Hugo Lloris suffered a concussion during a game. André
Villas-Boas, then the manager of Tottenham, insisted that it was the manager’s call, not the doctor’s, to decide if the player was O.K. to keep playing.
These
issues — and this failure to separate the roles of the medical and
coaching staffs — are too urgent to wait for the deliberations of a
subcommittee, followed by the inevitable approval by the FIFA executive
committee.
There was a sharp reminder of those risks just a week ago in D’Hooghe’s own backyard.
Kompany
played almost an hour of Belgium’s final 2016 Euro qualifier, a 3-1 win
over Israel in Brussels. Kompany, who has been battling aches and
sprains over the past few years, suffered no obvious signs of further
injury during the game, but his manager at Manchester City, Manuel
Pellegrini, was incensed nonetheless.
City’s
medical staff has been working cautiously on rehabilitating Kompany
after he suffered a recurrence of a calf injury five weeks ago. The
strength — and the trouble — with Kompany is that he has long regarded
himself as a so-called man’s man.
He
puts the team before himself, and as a big, muscular defender, he
boldly soldiers on whenever he is picked to play. After he broke down
during a Champions League game against Juventus in September, City’s
doctors advised that Kompany be rested so his calf muscle could fully
repair.
When
Kompany was asked to report to his national team, City approved, on the
condition that he did not play. The Manchester medical staff advised
that Kompany needed a minimum of five days’ intensive training before he
should play again.
Kompany
sat out Belgium’s first qualifier, then played the opening 58 minutes
in the second. Belgium Coach Marc Wilmots told reporters, “I don’t need
to ask a club if they want it or not. It is not the clubs that influence
my decisions. Vincent is my captain, and it’s the last match at home.
He is not injured; he’s ready, and when he’s ready, he plays.”
After
returning to City, he didn’t play. Neither did Sergio Agüero, David
Silva or Aleksandar Kolarov, who were injured playing for Argentina,
Spain and Serbia, respectively.
FIFA
rules are skewed in favor of the national associations. But it is the
clubs that pay the salaries and medical bills of the players 365 days a
year. And all they can do is await a new directive from the subcommittee
and a Belgian doctor.
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