By ROB HARRIS
After only one weekend of the English Premier League season, Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho is in familiar territory: Embroiled in an irrational dispute and his conduct being denounced.
The unexpected target of Mourinho’s ire is the club doctor whose eagerness to race onto the field to treat an apparently injured Chelsea player incensed the Portuguese coach.
Although Mourinho’s spats with referees and media outlets are commonplace, he is now being condemned by medical professionals for the “unjust” axing of Dr. Eva Carneiro from her match-day role on the Chelsea bench and giving the impression of not prioritizing players’ welfare.
Carneiro’s apparent job downgrading came after Mourinho publicly criticized the actions of his medical staff following the opening-day draw with Swansea.
In stoppage time, with Chelsea already down to 10 men after goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois was sent off, Eden Hazard was brought down at Stamford Bridge.
The immediate reaction from Carneiro and physiotherapist Jon Fearn was to leave the bench to treat Hazard. The protocol — designed to limit time-wasting by teams — required the winger to leave the field for a short time, temporarily leaving Chelsea with only nine players as the Premier League champions chased a winner.
“I was unhappy with my medical staff. They were impulsive and naive,” Mourinho said after the game. “Whether you are a kit man, doctor or secretary on the bench you have to understand the game.
“You have to know you have one player less and to assist a player you must be sure he has a serious problem.”
Frustrated at dropping two points at the start of Chelsea’s title defense, Mourinho concluded that Hazard “did not have a serious problem.”
But the Premier League Doctors Group issued a strong defense on behalf of Carneiro on Wednesday, saying the medics were clearly summoned by the referees to attend to Hazard. Refusing to go onto the field would have breached the doctor’s duty to a patient, said Mark Gillett, the group’s chairman who is West Bromwich Albion’s performance director.
“The Premier League Doctors’ Group considers that removing Dr. Eva Carneiro from the Chelsea team bench for their next match is unjust in the extreme,” Gillett said in a statement. “It is a huge concern that Dr. Carneiro has … a change in her professional role, merely because she adhered to her code of professional conduct and did her job properly.”
Carneiro has remained silent in public on the specifics of the case, but she did issue a rare social media posting on Sunday as the storm over Mourinho’s comments swelled.
“I would like to thank the general public for their overwhelming support,” Carneiro, who previously worked for the British Olympic Medical Institute and UK Athletics, wrote on her verified Facebook account. “Really very much appreciated.”
At a club which frowns on back-room staff beyond Mourinho and his assistant speaking publicly, such a comment will not have gone down well — particularly as it appeared to expose friction within the club.
Chelsea only said Wednesday “we don’t comment on internal staffing matters” even as the club is being criticized for seeming to undermine player welfare.
“The precedent set by this incident demonstrates that the medical care of players appears to be secondary to the result of the game,” said Gillett, speaking on behalf of the league’s doctors.
Gillet said there is a “pressing need to further establish and highlight the explicit role of a Premier League doctor.”
Mourinho is likely to be asked about it when he faces the media ahead of Sunday’s match against Manchester City, the team Chelsea took the title from last season.
Mourinho finding a distraction or a scapegoat is nothing new. Usually, though, the targets to deflect from his team’s shortcomings are referees or the media.
By picking a row with a Chelsea colleague, Mourinho has revived memories of the fall-out with owner Roman Abramovich which led to his first period in charge ending in 2007.
That came a month into his third season in charge — a milestone Mourinho is just weeks away from reaching in his second spell in the west London club’s dugout.
Given Mourinho only signed a new four-year contract last week, his future seems secure. But the doctor dispute in the opening days of the season shows that the self-proclaimed “Special One” is doing little to live up to his pledge on returning to Chelsea in 2013 to be the “Happy One.”