By Lori Ewing
MANCHESTER, England (Reuters) – The current concussion protocol in soccer is not working, according to global players’ union FIFPRO, which supports calls for a trial on temporary concussion substitutes.
The Premier League has also urged the law-making International Football Association Board (IFAB) to trial temporary substitutions to allow players with head injuries to be assessed.
IFAB will instead continue with permanent substitutions which FIFA president Gianni Infantino has declared the “risk-free” approach.
The permanent concussion substitutes rule means that a team can replace a player with a suspected head injury without it counting toward their allocation of substitutes.
“I fail to comprehend the logic to be very honest,” FIFPRO General Secretary Jonas Baer-Hoffman said on a video conference call.
“The defence of the current model is one that, in our experience over now more than 10 years of working on this, just departs from reality.”
FIFPRO said the pressures around the rule leaves too much room for error.
“Of course, it would be better to take any player off when you have a suspected concussion, and to just take an immediate decision, but it just doesn’t happen in practice,” Baer-Hoffman said.
“We remain convinced the temporary concussion substitutions … are actually the safer approach.
“It would mitigate a lot of those pressures, and we will keep pushing ahead to have those.”
The current protocol, which was introduced by the Premier League at the start of 2021, was also criticised by leading head injury charity Headway earlier this week.
“This system has repeatedly failed to protect players as it relies on either medics making an immediate judgement or for a player to risk exacerbating their brain injury by playing on for 10 to 15 minutes to see how they get on,” Headway’s Chief Executive Luke Griggs said.
(Reporting by Lori Ewing; Editing by Ken Ferris)
