Tottenham Hotspur brought striker Vincent Janssen, the leading scorer in the Dutch Eredivisie last year, over from from AZ Alkmaar for a reported €22 million. It was a long, protracted transfer saga is over, and it caused Janssen some anxiety. Now on international break with the Netherlands, Janssen is dealing with more adversity, and we mean real, genuine adversity, not the coachspeak/player interview cliche adversity.
He had a nasty collission in the Belgium match today, and suffered some serious head trauma.
In the 12th minute, Janssen chased down a lofted through ball from Georginio Wijnaldum but was absolutely crushed by Mignolet as the Belgian keeper came out to punch and took his man at the same time. Janssen immediately crashed to the ground and was visibly shaken, but played on for a further fourteen minutes after his injury.
According to Netherlands head coach Danny Blind, the prognosis is still unclear for the 22-year-old striker: “Vincent is going to be a very difficult story. The physician told me it is a concussion. He lost 20 minutes of his memory and doesn’t know what happened. We have to be careful with that and talk it through.”
It’s amazing that Janssen somehow played on after the hit. Football/soccer is a sport that has a massive concussion problem which goes largely unnoticed. It flies under the radar because the media doesn’t pay much attention to it. There aren’t a lot of concussion protocols in place right now at the very highest levels of the beautiful game.
Therefore it remains to be seen how much time Vincent Janssen will miss, if he misses any time at all.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net, partnered with FOX Sports Engage Network. and News Now. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, currently contributes regularly to the Chicago Tribune’s RedEye publication.
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