The impact to his head was so violent that Noureddine Amrabat can't remember the World Cup match at all Kevin Johnson Jersey , even though he was playing in it.
"Five, six hours, gone. Totally gone," the Morocco midfielder said of the concussion sustained in his team's opening match against Iran.
"When you think about it, it is a little bit scary."
Five days after a clash of heads sent him to hospital for a brain scan and 24 hours of medical supervision, the 31-year-old was back in the Moroccan lineup Wednesday and played the entire match in a 1-0 loss to Portugal, in defiance of FIFA guidelines and his team doctor.
The players' union, FIFPro, was highly critical of what it called "yet another alarming example of a player being put in harm's way."
Despite having expressed shock about Morocco's initial pitch-side treatment of Amrabat's concussion last Friday, tournament organizer FIFA absolved itself of any responsibility in the team decision to field him again so quickly. Amrabat wore a padded skull cap for a quarter-hour but took it off because he was too hot.
After the initial concussion diagnosis, Morocco team doctor Abderrazak Hefti had said Amrabat wouldn't even train for a week.
But the player said that he overruled the physician.
A week without playing "is the official time to recover, official time for your safety. I decided to make it shorter," Amrabat said after the loss, which eliminated Morocco from contention. "I felt good. It's the most important. I am my own doctor. And hopefully nothing bad for the long term."
This wasn't the first time that concussion management in football has come under the spotlight at the World Cup. Jolted by criticism of concussion cases at the 2014 tournament Josh Shaw Jersey , FIFA introduced guidelines intended to provide players with better protection and give team doctors more authority.
Moroccan team officials appeared to ignore the guidelines after Amrabat collided with Iran midfielder Vahid Amiri on Friday. Television images showed the apparently dazed Amrabat being sprayed with water and slapped on the face, seemingly to wake him from his stupor.
"There was a very clear concussion and we have instructed them very clearly and we spoke about the importance of proper treatment, which is why I was surprised at seeing the behavior on the touchline," FIFA medical chief Michel D'Hooghe said Wednesday.
"We wrote to them after that to say it appeared the guidelines were not correctly followed," he said. "I will now ask for an explanation from the Moroccan team doctor about what has happened so that he played again."
He added: "FIFA has no authority over this. We produce the guidelines but it is the team doctors who make the decision."
FIFPro said Amrabat shouldn't have played again so soon.
"Four years on from the debacle of the last World Cup, where several players did not receive adequate care, football has not made sufficient progress in concussion management," FIFPro said. "Repeated calls to implement world-class standards have been overlooked."
The new case comes amid rising concern in soccer about the risks of concussion and the potential degenerative damage to players' brains from repeatedly heading balls. Britain's associations are funding a study to try to determine whether players are more prone to developing dementia.
Other sports have more rigorous concussion protocols.
NFL players with concussion symptoms during a game are examined both by the team doctor and an independent neuro-trauma expert approved by the league. The team doctor decides whether a player suffered a concussion, with consultation from the independent expert. Players diagnosed with concussions start a five-step protocol that includes additional testing as the player progresses from light exercise to football contact. There is no time limit, but it generally takes five days or more. The NFL diagnosed 281 concussions during the 2017 season.
Amrabat said his brain scan showed no damage. But he said he cannot remember anything from the Iran game, "from the first minute 'til I wake up in the hospital."
To broadcaster NOS, he added: "On the bench I asked the same thing 10 times. After the match in the changing room I asked where I sat and I asked my brother six times if he'd gone on as a substitute."
"I have a bit of pain here if I press it," he said running his finger along the area just left of his left eye, "but in the end you want to play in a match like this. I had a helmet sent over from the Netherlands. But in the end . I felt more tired than normal Matt Prater Jersey , quite quickly, heavy legs. But generally it went reasonably well."
Herve Renard, the team's French coach, praised Amrabat as "a warrior."
"It's because his spirit is amazing and I was lucky to have a player like this."
Associated Press writers Mike Corder in Kaliningrad and Amira El Masaiti in Rabat, Morocco, contributed to this report.
The Nashville Predators are right where they are supposed to be.
The pick by many to win the Stanley Cup in June, the President’s Trophy winners are up 2-0 on Colorado in the first-round series and heading to Denver to finish off the pesky Avalanche.
While the series looks lopsided, it’s a lot closer than the 2-0 advantage. Colorado has led in both games and nearly rallied to force overtime in Saturday’s 5-4 Nashville win. Despite mounting injuries, the Avalanche are confident heading home, where they have won 28 games this season.
Still, the sting of losing both games in Nashville lingers for eighth-seeded Colorado ahead of Monday’s Game 3.
“We played hard, but we lost, so it doesn’t really matter. It’s tough,” center Nathan MacKinnon Damien Wilson Jersey , who had a goal and an assist to give him three points in the series, told reporters after Saturday’s loss. “I thought we played two pretty good games here in Nashville, and we couldn’t get a win.”
MacKinnon has been productive despite his line — which includes Mikko Rantanen and captain Gabriel Landeskog — being the focus of the Predators’ defense. He had 97 points in the regular season and is a serious Hart Trophy candidate as the NHL MVP, and he hasn’t slowed down in the postseason.
“Oh man, he’s special,” Predators forward Austin Watson told The Tennessean. “I mean, you don’t have the year he had this year without being a pretty incredible player. And just his line as a whole, they play the game with so much speed, you can’t get caught standing still.
“I mean, if you are, they’ll blow right around you. Even if you think you’re doing a good job on them, you can’t really take your foot off the gas at all or they’ll turn it back on you and get chances.”
The Predators have some special players, too, including Filip Forsberg Kasen Williams Jersey , who scored a highlight-reel goal in Game 1. Nashville won’t take Colorado lightly because it knows how dangerous a No. 8 seed can be. The Predators reached the Cup finals last year as the eighth seed in the West.
But Nashville has a healthy squad that has won 12 straight against Colorado dating back to the end of the 2015-16 season. The Avalanche, on the other hand, are playing without No. 1 defenseman Erik Johnson, top goaltender Semyon Varlamov and may not have rookie defenseman Samuel Girard for Game 3.
Girard was scratched from Game 2 with an upper-body injury and his status for Monday’s Game 3 is not known.
Both teams are hoping for a cleaner game in Denver. Game 2 was cluttered with 14 penalties — seven for each team — which might have been a result of Nashville center Ryan Johansen’s hit on Colorado defenseman Tyson Barrie in Game 1.
The Avalanche felt Johansen should have been suspended but the league didn’t agree. One thing that came out of it was a rivalry was born.
Nashville’s goal is to get the series over quickly. A win in Game 3 will make it nearly impossible for Colorado to win the series, and the young team knows it.
“There’s definitely no quit on their side,” Johansen Saturday. “That’s with every team in the playoffs, but they play desperate, they play fast, they’ve got a lot of young skill over there. We’ve got to make sure we close out games better.”
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