Medicine has been around a lot longer than Chelsea Football Club, Roman Abramovich, and Jose Mourinho. When Eva Carneiro was summoned by the referee to tend to Eden Hazard with a few minutes left on the clock, she was responding to the Hippocratic Oath or it’s modern day version.
“The health of my patient will be my first consideration.”
A doctor’s duty is to heal the sick and it’s a doctor’s professional remit to ascertain the severity of the injury to the patient. Not Mourinho or any other official of the CFC. One can understand the Chelsea manager’s anxiety in not losing the match given the Swans were a man up and on the balance, far likely to pull out a win. However, to play fast and loose with a player’s health is quite out of the bounds. Frankly, given it was Hazard, the EPL’s player of the year and so central to Chelsea’s title success is even more puzzling. Knocks like these are cumulative and Mourinho should know better the imperative in keeping Hazard in top physical shape for the rest of the season.
Mourinho’s peevishness at Hazard getting treatment plays right into the trope of a manager who cares little about anything but success. Which is why this is a cover up, smoke and mirrors for a match which did not go as planned, a side found wanting against a more determined foe who went toe to toe in the talent department. By manufactured outrage at Carneiro and the physio, Jon Fearn for “not understanding how the game is played” Mourinho deflects blame. However, this time it’s not some tinfoil UEFA conspiracy or some similar abstraction. This is flesh and blood, your own players and the medical staff that takes care of them. The cavalier fashion in which Carneiro and Fearn have been demoted to training session duties is glaringly tone deaf. There also appears to be elements of gamesmanship too as Carneiro’s Facebook post thanking her supporters for their encouraging words seemingly tripped up Mourinho’s micro-managing fuse. There was nothing to suggest any criticism of the Chelsea manager.
A doctor can change a hospital but his covenant to patients, colleagues, and his teachers remain sacrosanct and inviolable. Mourinho may understand how the game is played but such a covenant appears to be antithetical to his nature and beyond his understanding. The upshot is Chelsea will have to find replacement medical staff on the sidelines for match day and both the Football Medical Association and the little known Premier League Doctor’s Association have issued strong rebukes and supported Carneiro’s decision to treat Hazard. The latter having gone as far as stating ““the medical care of players appears to be secondary to the result of the game”. As David Conn points out, there is a chance that this may go to court on grounds of constructive dismissal.