The authorities can bang on all they like about player safety being the number one priority, but holding an international break just now just proves that it’s not the case.
We’ve seen the number of Covid-19 cases shoot up around the world so you would think this might be a bad time to have hundreds of players travelling around for some meaningless friendlies, but apparently not.
The BBC reported that several players were forced to miss the Wales vs Ireland fixture due to a positive test, while reports from Africa also indicate that there’s been an outbreak which includes Liverpool’s Naby Keita:
Naby Keita and four other guinean players have been tested positive to coronavirus with Syli National. More to come on @FOOT_224
— Amadou Makadji™ ?? (@ThAmadouMakadji) October 11, 2020
With reports like these it’s always hard to figure out exactly what’s happened when there’s no official confirmation, but the reports do sound reliable.
It’s worrying news for Liverpool and he’ll probably need to isolate for a couple of weeks before he can travel back to England, but the main thing just now is recovering from the virus if these reports do turn out to be true.
Obviously there were some competitive fixtures during this break but it was mainly friendlies, so it’s going to be tough for FIFA to justify this if it keeps getting worse.