Hugo K.O
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Hugo Lloris’ worrying brain-thump was the major talking point from Sunday’s visit to Goodison Park, which is reasonable enough when you consider that the usual outcome of a collision with something with the weight and dimensions of Romelu Lukaku’s lower-thigh, is instant vaporisation. Of anything in a two-meter radius.
Whether Villas-Boas and the Spurs’ medical team did the right thing in allowing the dazed French net-guardian to continue his afternoon- and the consensus is, by and large, to the negative- you have to appreciate the resilience of someone who can tangle with 100 kilos of cleaved Belgian oak, and live to tell the tale.
My view, in all seriousness, is that Lloris should’ve been hooked off immediately. You can admire the resolve of the man, but Hugo probably has designs in the future to remember things like how to drive, where eggs come from and the name of his daughter. Maybe not straightaway but, you know, this information can be useful. The second it was obvious that he’d been knocked-out, the next course of action should’ve been removal. No question.
One does wonder, though, as suggested in the Football365 Mailbox on Monday, what the press reaction would’ve been had, say, Joe Hart taken a skull-clobber, in, say, a World Cup semi-final? Hard to imagine, obviously. But what if the England Number One stubbornly refused to trot off down the tunnel, despite all good medical practice telling him otherwise? What if, instead, he returned to the action, all bog-eyed and spoony-legged and valiantly made a series of match-wining saves? The default setting of some of the tabloids has been AVB HAS DONE ANOTHER STUPID! but how easily does idiocy turn to bravery in the right context. Indeed, not too much was made of Lukaku himself soldiering on for half-an-hour or so, after he was sparked clean out against West Ham some weeks back.
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