Doctor on the go

Press Association

It being June 7 and three days before Euro 2016, I would have hoped to have drawn a firm and profoundly unsatisfied line under Chelsea's dismal domestic season. But no.

There has been the coda of annoyance wrapped up in outstanding legal claims against the club and José Mourinho from Dr. Eva Carneiro, all stemming from the incident on the opening day of the Premier League season when she, as first team doctor, along with physio Jon Fearn, were summoned to attend the injured Eden Hazard on the Stamford Bridge pitch, only to be demonstrably admonished by the-then team manager in his now infamous Basil Fawlty-like eruption. Two days later, Carneiro was very publically demoted by the club - supposedly on Mourinho's instructions - leading to her not returning to work.

And so, over the course of two relatively short sessions at the decidedly unglamourous London South Employment Tribunal in Croydon, Carneiro has had her claims of wrongful dismissal against the club, and a personal claim against Mourinho himself, tossed about by barristers. We heard that the club had offered Carneiro £1.2 million to settle her claims, which she had rejected, and that we were told that she had asked for a pay rise in the region of £400,000, amongst other benefits.

We also heard the club say, in disparaging tones, that Carneiro had become increasingly "visible", appearing in an Ice Bucket Challenge video for charity, thanking Facebook followers for their support in the wake of the August 8 incident, and even that she had "positioned" herself in the Chelsea dugout to be noticeable behind Mourinho during matches.

On the one hand we can probably put this aggressive stance down to the game Chelsea's lawyers choose to play in contesting Carneiro's claims. That's the way high stakes legal disputes go down. But the simple fact is that it should have never come to this. Mourinho should have just apologised in the immediate aftermath of the Hazard incident and put his alleged use of the colourful Portuguese phrase filha da puta ("daughter of a whore") down to the frustration we all have to exhale in the heat of a game.

But he compounded it by later making ill-advised comments about club employees' knowledge of the game ("Even if you are a kit man, a doctor or a secretary on the bench, you have to understand the game," he said at the post-match press conference), and worsened it still when the club announced, a couple of days later, a much-reduced role for Carneiro. No wonder she didn't want to come back on any terms.

Today, Carneiro and the club settled the dispute privately without revealing conditions of the settlement. In a statement to the tribunal, Chelsea's barrister said that the club "regretted the circumstances" which led to Carneiro leaving the club and apologised unreservedly to her and her family for the distress caused. Poignantly, the statement said: "We wish to place on record that in running onto the pitch Dr. Carneiro was following both the rules of the game and fulfilling her responsibility to the players as a doctor, putting their safety first." Make of that admission what you will.

Carneiro herself said in a statement: "I am relieved that today we have been able to conclude this tribunal case. It has been an extremely difficult and distressing time for me and my family and I now look forward to moving forward with my life. My priority has always been the health and safety of the players and fulfilling my duty of care as a doctor."

Notably, there was no personal statement from Mourinho himself, who also attended today's hearing. Chelsea's statement included a line that: "Jose Mourinho also thanked Dr. Carneiro for the excellent and dedicated support she provided as First Team Doctor and he wishes her a successful career." All of which reeks of piety.

Football, as we all know, remains a defiantly unreformed bastion of rigid convention. That Carneiro was so prominent as first team doctor was in itself a major victory for women challenging for roles that men almost by right seem to take in the game. Even the grounds on which Chelsea's legal team chose to counter Carneiro's claims hinted strongly at an agenda that went beyond trying to discredit her allegation. Inevitably, in the unreconstructed world of Twitter, the trolls came out in force in a blizzard of closet mysogyny, accusing Carneiro of being a money-grabbing gold digger. And worse.

Mourinho himself, now anointed at Manchester United, has come out of it all relatively scot-free. Apart from the statement issued through his former club's lawyers, there is no word or reaction from him, and definitely not the formal apology he could have given last August which would have resolved the issue. Merely thanking Carneiro for her "excellent and dedicated support" and wishing her "a successful career" is about as mealy-mouthed as you could get.

© Simon Poulter 2015

Chelsea, Mourinho, Carneiro and certainly Manchester United will want to move on hastily. In a way, so should we all. But it leaves open a dangerous chasm for the affair to fall into, taking with it the debate over women in prominent positions at Premier League clubs. Carneiro was a pioneer in this regard. There are plenty of women at leading clubs, but few - if any - as front line-visible or in leading roles, with the exception of media-savvy executives like Karren Brady and even Delia Smith, as well as the various ladies teams.

Carneiro was out there as a key part of Chelsea's first team set-up, one that meant she faced inevitable sexist abuse from neanderthals at away grounds - and even from her own club's supporters, despite carrying out a job as critical as that of a club doctor, one of the basic tenets of her argument over the treatment she received from Mourinho. It would be a shame if, after this affair, other women - in medical or coaching roles or any other - were put off from applying for senior positions at football clubs.

There will be those who think I'm being overly PC about this, and even shoehorning a feminist debate into football. But when I think back to Carneiro's first appearance on the bench at Stamford Bridge, there was plenty of nudge-nudge, wink-winking going on, and the customary chorus of "Celery!". It was, though, short lived. After a while, even the less progressive members of the Bridge fraternity just got on with watching the game, rather than the petite Gibraltan doctor. That, believe me, was progress. One wonders now, given some of the things revealed over the last two days, that we haven't taken an almighty step backwards.