England’s Beth Mead calls on UEFA to introduce concussions substitutions after ‘scary’ head injury

Arsenal and England forward Beth Mead has called on UEFA to consider introducing concussions substitutes after she suffered a “scary” head injury against Ajax last week.

Mead was playing for Arsenal in the Women’s Champions League when she clashed heads with defender Lisa Doorn.

Arsenal boss Jonas Eidevall said he was told he could make a concussion substitution before being informed that it would not be allowed. In the end, the Gunners ended up just taking off Mead and playing the remaining six minutes of the game, which they won 1-0, with 10 players.

Concussions substitutions are currently allowed in the Women’s Super League as they are participating in the IFAB trial which allows two permanent substitutions to be made in the event of head injuries, even if all replacements have already been used.

UEFA competitions, however, aren’t running the trial and as such teams can only make a maximum of five substitutions within three stoppages.

“It might knock some sense into me for once,” Mead joked of the knock. “Obviously I am fine now, I’ve done all the protocols, I am back in training. At the time it was a bit of scary situation.

“I thought the club did amazing with me and did the right thing taking me off the pitch, but unfortunately there wasn’t a concussion sub in place through UEFA. And again, it’s such a serious injury, I think that’s a little bit disappointing that’s not in place at the moment and something that they maybe need to look at.”

Mead has fully recovered from the head injury and is expected to start for England against the USA at Wembley Stadium tomorrow.

The friendly, which is being played in front of a sold-out crowd, will be a good litmus test for the Lionesses as they take on the reigning champions ahead of next year’s World Cup.

“I know they are one of the best teams in the world, they are ranked number one,” said England head coach Sarina Wiegman. “I think there are a couple of teams at the moment who are really good and are at a really high level.

“We saw in the Euros that the European game has improved so much that we’ve come closer and closer. We’d like to show that tomorrow of course. But I think the USA are very excited too to come to Europe and play top-level teams.

“So we’re not only thinking of the result, yes we want to win, but we hope we can dominate the game, that’s what we’re planning to do and what we want to do.”