But the players are in trouble: “Then you get a bad salary”
Malmo. Two years ago, Malmö FF put a lid on injuries.
Now they’ve taken a turn and opened up about the damage.
Players see a problem with that.
Insurance companies read newspapers, too, says Anders Christiansen.
March 2020 ströp Malmo FF Information about the injuries of their players.
They put the lid on and mention the General Data Protection and Player Privacy Regulations.
Athletic Director (now Athletic Director) Daniel Anderson noted changes to insurance which meant that certain injuries could be ruled out depending on prior history and that insurers were using media information to get an accurate picture of the injury.
The media, club supporters and club doctors criticized the cover-up. FIFA is still holding on to it and there was, for example, a big secret when Ola Toivonen and Jonas Knudsen seriously injured their knees last year during matches in front of thousands of spectators and TV viewers and were out for almost a year. It basically took them back on the field before it turned out that they had pulled their cruciate ligaments.
It was a negative result.
But last fall the MFF began to open up again about injuries and in 2022 it was extraordinarily open, for example dealing with heavy cruciate ligament injuries this year for Adi Nalic and Niklas Moisander respectively. The latter barely made it off the field before team doctor Bar Herbertson announced to the press that it was a cruciate ligament injury.
– Textbook example of Mr. Herbertson. At first he asked Niklas if it was okay to say, then got a yes and then shared his doubts about the damage to the media, says MFF Communications Director Matthias Larsson.
The former Kvällsposten journalist, who was “recruited” to the MFF last summer, has a leadership role in the changing MFF politics.
– When I was appointed, there was a request from the club to handle injury-related communication in a different way and I was given a free hand to make a new offer, he says.
According to Larsson, there was another reason to start the dark injury MFF in 2020.
There were a lot of articles written about injuries before that and the idea was to focus on things other than injuries.
But instead there was more speculation about injuries as the club tried to cover them up.
At the same time, they were seen as introverted, and that was a negative outcome that they weren’t looking for. Then the GDPR was also quite new and you didn’t really know how it would be interpreted. The concerns about that have been exaggerated, Larson says.
For a year now, the MFF sends out a damage report once a week and excludes more serious damage in between.
Although Jon D. Thomason remained coach when the MFF changed its policy a year ago, it is also clear how this year the three coaches have been more open about injuries (and other things) than the Dane.
Then you get a bad salary.
But players are seeing problems with the new openness to their injuries. Jo Inge Berget and Anders Christianen both mention the insurance problem.
It’s good to be able to open up and have a good dialogue about it. At the same time, the insurance companies are harsh. Once they read that you have pain in one knee, it is removed from insurance and then you get a bad paycheck if you injure the same knee. It is sad that it has to be this way. That’s a reason to keep it a secret, says Jo Eng Birgit.
Did the players agree and agree to this twist?
– We players didn’t have much to say about it. It’s more about the fact that they decided to be more open and we have to adapt accordingly.
You do not know why they turned around?
– No, not really, says Birgit.
– No, I don’t know, says Christiansen.
But you do what they say?
– Yes, usually like that, Birgit smiles.
But according to Matthias Larsson, players must have shared feedback on the new policy through the Players Council.