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On Sunday, in a match his team needed only to draw to all but seal a league title, Chelsea midfielder Oscar suffered what could only be described as an obvious concussion. After crashing, head-to-head, into Arsenal keeper David Ospina, the Brazilian’s head hit the turf, his arms stiff and uncontrollable above him, the fencing response that is typical in those who have just taken a concussive blow to the head.
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Under the league’s new concussion policy, it is obvious what should have happened next: an immediate concussion evaluation followed almost certainly by a substitution. But what actually followed should not be surprising in the least in a league where players keep taking hits to the head and soldiering on anyway. After a brief trip to the sideline, Oscar stayed on the pitch for another half an hour, substituted only at halftime when Chelsea doctors and manager Jose Mourinho finally noticed that maybe something was wrong.
To the extent there was any concern about the player’s brain, though, it quickly ceased: Mourinho said Monday that despite Oscar’s trip to the hospital Sunday afternoon, the Brazilian midfielder who has been pivotal to the team’s apparent title-winning campaign will travel to Leicester City for a mid-week match Wednesday. He may not play, but it seems he’ll be available if needed.
Previous unaddressed concussions have drawn scrutiny both to the Premier League and FIFA, soccer’s governing body. There was Everton’s Romelu Lukaku forgetting he scored a goal. Last season it was Tottenham keeper Hugo Lloris, clearly unaware of his surroundings, playing on. At last summer’s World Cup there was Uruguay’s Alvaro Pereira ignoring team doctors and Germany’s Christoph Kramer, clearly concussed, briefly continuing to play. The World Cup incidents were enough for the sport’s players association, FIFPro, to call on FIFA to institute better concussion policies. The Lloris incident was the English league’s reason for instituting new concussion policies before this season.
And yet, the Oscar situation, and others involving his own team and others, has made it clear that those policies remain little more than words on paper. Chelsea maintains that it did nothing wrong, but under the EPL’s policy, Oscar should have been evaluated by a team doctor right away. Given his swift return to the field, it’s almost impossible to believe he was, and the insistence that he is available this soon afterward would seem to suggest that, despite the hospital visit, the possibility of real injury still isn’t being taken seriously.
Concussions have become a major issue in soccer around the world from the professional ranks to the youth level. In 2013, doctors found chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a major brain disease linked to blows to the head, in a soccer player for the first time. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that more than 10,000 soccer players go to American emergency rooms for suspected concussions each year. In both girls’ and boys’ soccer, there have been discussions about how to limit head injuries.
That the Premier League, the most popular soccer league in the world, instituted stronger concussion protocols than even FIFA before this season was a sign of progress in a sport where concussions remain a pressing problem from the professional level to the amateur and youth ranks. It was clearly trying to take a leadership role by starting a campaign “aimed at making players and managers at all levels aware of the dangers of head injuries.” But a year in, its own players and clubs don’t seem aware of those dangers. The Football Association’s new concussion expert panel, part of the new plan, will apparently discuss Oscar’s injury at its first meeting next month. That panel should use it to figure out a way to make this policy actually work, because just as with the NFL, the Premier League’s policies (and the presumed example it might set for lower leagues) are meaningless if they’re rarely applied or enforced.