Jose Mourinho puts winning over player safety, because soccer is inhumane

Soccer players are things, not people. (We can extend that to all athletes if need be.) Their main goal is to help the team win and their own personal ambitions fall under that umbrella. Players are priced, bought and sold in the same manner that any other commodity is, and as such are discarded when they’re deemed useless.

And since sports is a microcosm of life, you can see that anywhere relatively big money is involved. Laborers naturally become things. A recent article on Amazon’s workplace dynamic revealed that the company promotes an uber-competitive atmosphere that feeds off human cynicism. The writing gives several examples: workers snitching on each other in order to bury their own teammates, managers ranking their subordinates and pacts being formed in order to eliminate people viewed as threats.

Unsurprisingly, the median tenure there is one year. They employ talented people, grind them down, discard them and replace them with younger and sometimes more talented employees. It’s no different than how any sports team operates. Or rather, it’s no different than how any successful business does and -- many can argue -- should operate.

Chelsea at the moment has 500 --ballpark figure-- talented youth players out on loan, and 490 of those will never play for the first team. It’s the system they used to sell Nemanja Matic and buy him again when he became a good player.

Which brings us to the current situation that’s dominated the headlines in England.

All Jose Mourinho did in shouting for his medical staff to leave an ailing Eden Hazard on the field in the waning seconds against Swansea is what was best for his team. He is simply another in the long list of managers and coaches who have made that same call to prioritize his team’s main goal over a player’s immediate health. He tried to do what’s best for his team at that very moment, and what was best for his team at that very moment was at conflict with what’s best for the player. That doesn’t make Mourinho special.

The conflict is that the medical staff attended to the player without his consent and, in turn, violated the sacred creed of team over player. Chelsea’s medical staff works for Chelsea football club, not Eden Hazard. Their objective is to make sure the players are healthy enough to do the manager’s bidding. With that established, their loyalty and obedience is to the manager at all times. It’s no different than Pep Guardiola losing his shit because his all of his players were being ruled out due to injuries late last season. He can’t win without them, and if the medical staff isn’t making sure that they’re ready to play as soon as possible, they’re putting his job at risk and the team’s main ambition in danger.

And so Mourinho lost his head, yelled at his medical team as they came off the field, called them naive in the post-game interview and promptly demoted both Jon Fearn and Eva J.

Carneiro is the more famous of the two, so her demotion started a maelstrom of articles wondering if Mourinho had banished her because she’s a woman. Even Vogue wrote about it. It didn’t help that this came at the heels of Mourinho’s public spat with Montse Seara, the wife of Rafa Benitez. (Mourninho suggested she should watch her husband’s diet rather than speak about him.)

Is Mourinho a sexist? Could be. Could not.

But it’s important to note that he has done similar things like this in the past to anyone -- male or female -- that doesn’t follow his vision. At Real Madrid, he exiled and shamed club legend Iker Casillas so much that even players from their eternal rivals Barcelona were sending their sympathies. Before that, he forced the firing of Jorge Valdano, the director general and presidential aide, when Valdano criticized his tactics and siege mentality. When it comes to Mourinho, you’re either with him or against him. If you’re against him, it’s only a matter of time before he gets rid of you.

That’s not at all to downplay sexism in soccer. It’s as ingrained in its culture as round balls and sketchy offside decisions. One of the reasons that Carneiro is famous is due to the fact that she’s good-looking. She has become eye candy for the animalistic male fans who slobber on themselves at the sight of a woman. She’s constantly lambasted with sexist chants and shots of her face and body are frequently shown during dull moments in play. Twitter search her name during any Chelsea match and you’ll see how undeveloped the male population really is.

Bottom line: the sexist nature of the sport can not and should not be ignored.

That said, it probably wasn’t the only cause of Mourinho’s anger. He explained that cause after the game. In the same breath where he called his medical staff naive, he said that having Hazard off the field temporarily reduced his team to nine men, which could have cost the team a late goal and two points in the standings.

He wanted his medical team to think as he does. Everything else, especially player health, is secondary to the team’s performance.

If the two doctors had taken Mourinho’s cue and waited for Hazard to inevitably get back on his feet, would anyone have raised an eyebrow? Surely not, as it happens frequently every single week. A player is knocked down, writhes in pain and eventually get back on his feet, strolling around the pitch gingerly for the initial seconds after. Sometimes, the ref stops the match. Most times he doesn’t.

Shouldn’t every single incident like that be seen as criminal? If the player’s safety is that important to the public, why is there no furor over Olivier Giroud’s head injury in Arsenal’s first game against West Ham?

Mourinho’s issue is that he reminded the public of the inhumanity that no one seems to want to acknowledge. How often have we seen a clearly concussed player in the past and present be sent back onto the pitch in order to finish the match? How often have players been praised for playing injured, sacrificing their long-term health for the team’s immediate gain? This isn’t new at all.

A long time ago, we accepted that players are means to an end and should be treated as such. What Mourinho did is demote members of his team for putting the ultimate goal at risk for a commodity.

It’s what the culture of soccer, sports and everyday life has dictated. Players are not people. They can be bought, sold, released and replaced. They are as dispensable as any other tool, and because of that, the team’s needs will always come before any player as long as Chelsea’s medical staff works for Chelsea.

Even if it means leaving an injured winger out on the field for the world to see.