Fabian Schar reveals his surprising reaction to head injury furore after Newcastle United return

Schar played on for Switzerland against Georgia last month despite being knocked out for a few seconds.

The incident led to a call for a UEFA investigation by brain injury charity Headway, whose chief executive Peter McCabe said: “What’s it going to take to make football take concussion seriously?”

And former United striker Alan Shearer also hit out at what he felt was a “ridiculous” decision to let him play on.

Schar was assessed by medical staff in Switzerland and on Tyneside before being cleared to resume training.

The 27-year-old, however, shrugged off the controversy after returning for Newcastle, beaten 1-0 at the weekend by Crystal Palace.

“I’m good,” said Schar. “The thing happened with the head, but everything’s fine. I trained the whole week with the team in the build-up to the (Palace) game, and I’m feeling really good.

“For me, I don’t care what has been said. People have written and said a lot of stuff, but a lot of it’s not true. There was too much polemic about this.

“It looked bad at the moment it happened, but, in the end, I was fine and it was not too bad at all. I feel really good, and it hasn’t affected me at all. I have no injury now, so hopefully we can stop talking about this.”

Schar returned for United after serving a two-game ban for picking up 10 bookings.

The game was decided by a second-half penalty from Palace captain Luka Milivojevic after DeAndre Yedlin brought down Wilfried Zaha in the box.

“All the teams in this league are so competitive, so every day has to be a good day for you to win games,” said Schar. “It’s always difficult. There are no easy games – the Premier League is really hard, and we know that. It’s the same for a lot of the teams.

“It’s always disappointing when you a lose a game, and especially when you lose it in the way we lost this one. We conceded a stupid penalty, and they scored from that. We had the better chances so it is frustrating.”

Newcastle, looking for a fifth successive home league win, had failed to take their first-half chances.

“We know we have to score when we have chances, but then on the other side, we also knew how dangerous they are on the counter-attack,” said Schar. “We had to find the balance. At the end they had two or three counter-attacks, but we did fairly well from our side, and that’s why the final result was such a disappointment.”

United are 15th in the Premier League and seven points above 18th-placed Cardiff City – who have a game in hand – ahead of Friday night’s fixture against Leicester City at the King Power Stadium.

“We need some more points to get safe, and we want to get them as fast as possible,” said Schar.

“We have to forget the game now and look forward.”