After Germany, Spain. Footballers from German football clubs were the first of the major European championships to return to training in early April. It is now the turn of the Spanish club players, who have been on standby since March 12 due to the coronavirus epidemic, to be able to do the same.
Monday, May 4, the Spanish government launched its deconfinement plan. For professional athletes, this translates to "The opening of individual training and basic training in professional leagues".
As of Tuesday, May 5, footballers in La Liga, the Spanish league, will be tested and will be able to resume training 48 hours after successful completion.
The country's health and sports authorities have given the green light, and the La Liga (the league that manages professional football) and the Spanish Football Federation have developed a protocol for return to training with medical experts.
The latter will "Staggered between individual training and group training", La Liga said in a statement. That "Will last approximately one month and will have different phases which will remain subject to the de-escalation plan established by the government".
Given this schedule, La Liga expects "Start playing again in June and finish (the) 2019-2020 season this summer », said its president, Javier Tebas, quoted in the press release. "The return of football means that society is gradually returning to normal", he added.
Ten Covid-19 positive cases in German clubs
The German clubs and their players should, for their part, be fixed on Wednesday 6 May on the possibility – or not – of resuming competition behind closed doors and finishing the championship. Chancellor Angela Merkel and the Presidents of the Länder are to hold a videoconference and decide on this matter.
Interior and sports minister Horst Seehofer said on Sunday that "The schedule proposed by the German Football League (East) plausible " and supports "A restart in May".
However, the results of the first tests of the coronavirus carried out on the players revealed, Monday, ten positive cases in the German clubs. FC Cologne had already publicly announced on Saturday three cases in its workforce.
The League welcomed the results, noting that there were ten cases out of 1,724 tests carried out. But the interior ministry confirmed that football could not break the rule that anyone who has been in contact with a positive case must observe a period of isolation of fourteen days. "This is a principle that applies to the whole population, and there is no reason why it should be otherwise for professional footballers. "
As it stands, the protocol proposed by the League for the resumption of the championship provides for the exclusion of positive cases, but suggests that the rest of the workforce could continue to train and play if the tests ( twice a week) were negative.
A complete isolation of the entire membership of one or more clubs for fourteen days would make the schedule for the end of the championship, already very tight, untenable. There are nine days left in the Bundesliga, plus the climb-down run, not counting the semi-finals and the cup final.
It is in this context that Hertha Berlin suspended its attacker, Salomon Kalou, who published a live video on Facebook in which we saw him not respecting any measure of distancing. "Salomon Kalou violated the fundamental internal rules of the team and displayed a behavior which does not correspond either to the situation or to the club's rules of conduct", said the management of Hertha Berlin announcing the suspension of the player.
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