Bayern Munich’s honorary president has given an emotional interview on Jamal Musiala’s series of collapses.
Musiala fainted in a pre-season friendly against Leipzig on August 15 and was caught by teammate Ismael Saibari in concerning scenes.
Surprisingly he played again three days later against Heidenheim and the same incident occurred, sparking worldwide concern.
Musiala took to social media almost immediately to say the collapses are harmless and part of a ‘neurological dysfunction’ which the club has known about for a while.
However, there’s understandably plenty of questions over his long-term future, and Bayern’s honorary president Uli Hoeness is particularly concerned.
Musiala’s collapses leave Bayern shellshocked
In an interview with RTL, he said: “We’d been aware of the problems for some time, but now it happened for the first time on the pitch against Leipzig and it was obvious to everyone.
“At the time we thought, ‘Well, if it doesn’t happen again so soon, the medication he’s taking will help.’ But the fact that it happened again four days later, in the same way, completely shocked me.
“We expected everything, but not this accumulation of problems. It’s a tragedy, especially for Jamal.”
Bayern’s approach to Musiala collapses is defended
Hoeness went on to defend Bayern’s approach to the situation.
He continued: “There were always hints and, occasionally, one or two problems, but they never occurred at our club. So, we weren’t very involved.
“I don’t know if it ever happened in training. Our staff, quite rightly, keep that information secret. I go to bed thinking about it and I wake up thinking about it.
“Frankly, we’re quite bewildered at the moment. We haven’t been able to prepare for this. First, we have to learn how to deal with this situation.
“The treating physicians, the neurologists, the specialists, all gave us written confirmation – which was absolutely necessary – that, from their point of view, there were no objections to Jamal participating in high-performance sports. Without that, we would have acted negligently.”
“We never looked into it thoroughly. We always believed Jamal would start a new chapter after the World Cup. It happened in the first match, which, of course, caught us off guard.
“I’m rarely at a loss for words, but first we need to get our bearings in this situation.”
Leave a Reply