Ryan Mason admits that he was ‘shocked’ that Arsenal’s David Luiz was allowed to complete the first-half after his horrific collision with Raul Jimenez during the encounter with Wolves.
The former Tottenham youth product suffered his own head trauma after clashing heads with Gary Cahill back in 2017, and despite undergoing a successful operation, never played again.
After months of rehabilitation, the decision was eventually taken to retire from football in March 2018, at the tender age of just 26, and he of all people can speak on the matter from the inside.
Mason has called for the rules to change after seeing the incident at the weekend, especially because he believes that the medical teams followed the current protocols correctly, but that those are inadequate.
He told talkSPORT: “I was quite upset to see something like that happen on a football pitch again, it’s very concerning.
“It’s a real shame my incident didn’t change the perception; what is it really going to take for people to start realising this is something really, really serious?
“I’ll be honest, I was shocked David Luiz was allowed to play on. I’m not criticising the Arsenal doctor because there’s a protocol in place and I’m sure he’s followed that.
“But that protocol that is currently in place is not enough; it’s not enough just to have two or three minutes, it’s not enough.
“It was a bad one; the noise, the impact, the speed of the challenge as well – it was a bad one. It didn’t help that there were no fans and you could actually hear the point of contact.
“But I looked at that and thought immediately, neither of those players can play on. Sometimes you have to forget the protocol and have a bit of common sense.
“The game needs to change this rule. It’s pretty clear that five minutes on the side of the pitch while there is pressure to get the game restarted is not enough to see if someone is concussed or not.
“This current protocol we have in place isn’t okay and it’s dangerous.”
You can only hope that Jimenez’s injury recovers in such a way that he is able to return to action in the near future, and that no adverse affects come from the clash, but looking back at Mason’s incident, it leads you to consider that may not be as easy as initially thought.
Patrick
Mason is right, it’s been 3 years since his accident and not much has changed how can you assess the effects of concussion in few minutes, MA should have subbed Luiz straight away and the fact that he was allowed to drive himself home is unbelievable, we didn’t manage the situation very well having said that if concussions substitutions had been in place it wouldn’t have been a à talking point, I wish Jimenez a speedy recovery but the chances of him being the same player as before the incident are very slim, Mason had to retire, Cech was never the same player after his.
Brilliant, Siamois 👍👍 There was also that time with Vertonghen when he was cleared to play on and then minutes later signalled he couldn’t carry on and had to be helped off the pitch…
Luiz was even allowed to drive home!!
It’s madness Sue isn’t it? he could have suffered a fit seizure at the wheels imagine that!
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I had forgotten about Verthongen! There’s been a few of them over the years.
Mason is very much right. The rules have simply got to change and plaers well being should be the priority not the continuation of the game. Louis should have been subbed immediately and taken home. Its absurd he was allowed to continue and even more absurd that he was allowed to drive home all alone. The persons in authority should make immediate changes to the rules.
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