GELFAND’S WORLD-Sunday's World Cup final reminded me of the time I witnessed an opposition player get knocked cold 4 times in the first half of a game. He kept getting up, a little staggered, and going back into the game. This all happened at a rugby match against Amherst College back in a different time, played under that era's rules. And one rule was very simple: No substitutions.
If you were hurt, you were supposed to either get back up or leave the field, and if you left the field, there was no returning. Your team played one short. Rugby eventually changed, but international soccer needs to change more.
The near-maiming of a German World Cup player by a blow to the head happened in Sunday's World Cup final against Argentina. It's not surprising that he would want to stay in the match, but sometimes a little tough love needs to be asserted in the rules of the game.
The fact that the rules don't protect the players by requiring their immediate removal from the game is, in effect, abuse. They are not being protected from being endangered by their own coaches, and this has led to calls for reform by the medical establishment.
The BBC story links to an editorial in the prestigious medical journal Lancet, which suggests that players suffering from suspected concussions be evaluated by independent medical professionals rather than by someone who works for the team.
Modern soccer and American football have made attempts to deal with injuries, but considering what went on in this World Cup, international soccer needs to do some serious thinking. The head injuries we saw in this tournament were non-trivial, and the limited number of substitutions allowed by the current rule structure provides an incentive to keep injured players in the game. Soccer could, easily enough, deal with this kind of issue by increasing the number of allowed substitutions, or by allowing a temporary substitution for an injured player which would allow for a proper medical evaluation.
But soccer has one additional problem which probably won't get resolved. It's legal for players to strike the ball with their own heads. In fact, it's a standard way of scoring goals and of defending against high punts. The result is that soccer players accumulate a lifetime of blows to the head.
It's not clear that these types of blows are anything like the chronic head trauma that accumulates in American football. The science of neurology has only recently identified chronic brain damage as a major facet of professional football, and we don't know if it's also a condition associated with long term soccer play.
Perhaps the situation in American football is different. We should probably assume that there will be increasing numbers of retired professionals who are found to be seriously disabled due to accumulated brain damage. Given advances in diagnostic imaging, we may eventually find that the majority of retired football players suffer at least some level of brain dysfunction.
Several decades ago, a lot of American parents decided that American football was not appropriate for their own children. Soccer became the way to go. It was supposed to provide children with healthy, wholesome exercise, without inflicting permanent knee problems or lost teeth. American parents were probably being a bit naive back then, particularly in regard to the knee injuries, but at least the kids playing soccer weren't being subjected to the level of violent head banging that is the norm in American football.
One must admit that the parents of that era were indeed prescient. The chronic brain damage scandal that is now building in American football may lead to increasing numbers of American children going into soccer, and this may ultimately lead to some significant competition between American major league soccer and American professional football. I mean, we've got this whole underused Los Angeles Coliseum that could host matches between the US and Brazil (and this would have been the right year, if the World Cup results tell us anything).
But American parents need to understand that pursuing a career in soccer may be, in its own way, physically damaging. The recent World Cup provided evidence enough. I'm not talking about the high drama when a player suffers a slight kick to the shin and falls dramatically to the turf, moaning and gasping at a level that would do honor to the opera stage.
But you can tell the difference between "flopping" and real injury. As one commenter pointed out, when a player is really hurt, he skips the dramatics and stays coiled up in self protection, the same as American football players do. In this one tournament, we saw Brazil's most famous player taken off with a fractured spine, and we saw numerous head injuries.
What remains to be seen is whether soccer also contributes to chronic traumatic encephalopathy, and this in turn depends on modern medicine figuring out how to detect the problem in its early stages, before it becomes a drag on the quality of life.
Even my favorite sport, rugby, is now having to face the question of chronic brain injury. One case of chronic traumatic encephalopathy has been confirmed at autopsy.
{module [862]} {module [662]}
The conclusion in the latter article is that chronic brain injury is a worldwide problem that is being found, more and more, in all contact sports. Repeated use of the head to punch a soccer ball may very well be a causative factor.
American football, rugby, and possibly other sports are part of a problem that we didn't even know existed until a very few years ago. Whether American football survives in something like its present form is a legitimate question. Perhaps it will continue on like professional boxing, with a diminishing pool of young participants feeding its ranks.
Soccer, being the most popular sport in the world by far, is unlikely to suffer the same fate. But at some point, if neurology points the way, there will be changes in the game, or American parents may be forced to find another sport for their children.
(Bob Gelfand writes on culture and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected])
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 12 Issue 57
Pub: Jul 15, 2014
