Coronavirus pandemic has swept the world! Today, there is no corner on our planet where this cursed disease has not reached. The life of society has changed a lot since the end of February. Someone plays in non gamstop casinos, and someone has begun to engage in self-development. Covid epidemic affected primarily the sports field. Football has suffered the most, first because of a number of restrictions on matches and championships, and second, because of the high level of diseases among the players. And we know how valuable really good football athletes are and that they are simply irreplaceable for clubs, national teams and so on.
How has the virus affected football sport in the world?
Football is a team game with millions of fans. This is the most spectacular and most beloved sport that has ever existed in our world. Therefore, it is not surprising that as soon as the state authorities in alliance with the World Health Association began to impose restrictions on mass events around the world, the first thing these sanctions affected was football. The self-isolation mode cannot be reached in the terms of team games, even in a case of training and small friendly matches. Therefore, all training sessions, matches, and so on were stopped.
What can we say about the European and World Championships?! It is clear that the fans and the players themselves had to say goodbye to these sports events for at least one season. In the context of the spread of coronavirus infection, when people were forced to simply lock themselves in their apartments and even go to the store to buy food on a schedule, there was no chance of any mass events or football matches at all. This is how events unfolded throughout the spring of 2020 and the first half of summer. Then, when some countries in Europe began to gradually reduce the degree of isolation, football fans and players themselves began to hope that the pandemic would soon end and we could once again come to the stadium to support the football team.
As a result of the Covid-19 infection spreading, significant sporting events such as Euro-2020 were cancelled. This large-scale competition has been postponed until 2021. But no one knows what will happen in the world in 6-9 months. How can we predict now whether Euro-2021 will take place in reality? The year 2020 made it very clear to all of us that it doesn’t make sense to make plans anymore. The world has become much more unpredictable than it was before. Now we can only assume, hope and try to make the idea, but we can no longer be sure of something.
Someone can make such a logical assumption: why are football players so afraid of coronavirus, because they are athletes, which means they have a strong immune system?! Statistics show that there is no insurance or panacea for this disease. Absolutely anyone can get sick with covid, although it is worth adding that people without concomitant diseases and with good health will definitely tolerate this infection more easily.
Covid-19 and world-class football players
There are no spatial, temporal, or social barriers to coronavirus. This disease can be contracted by any person, in any country and at any time. And football players are also in the zone of this common risk. Moreover, due to the lifting of a number of restrictions that began in the second half of the summer in some European countries, athletes again began to train and even take part in some competitions. As a result, fall 2020 has come and we can see an increase in the incidence of diseases among famous football players. Many of the sports celebrities have already recovered, while others are still in the process.
Number of Premier League clubs members were diagnosed with Covid-19, which subsequently affected teammates, coaches, staff, and so on. In the beginning of March, just minutes after the Premier League announced that the games would go ahead as planned, Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta was confirmed to have contracted the virus. And as the spread of the pandemic has shown, March was just the beginning.
Six months later, in October 2020, the following world-famous football players fell ill with Covid-19:
- Cristiano Ronaldo (Juventus);
- Weston McKenney (Juventus)
- Matteo Guendouzi (Hertha);
- Simon Mignolet (Brugge);
- Michal Krmenchik (Brugge);
- Moussa Sissako (Standard);
- Serge Gnabry (Bayern).
And this is a far from complete list of all the famous football players who became victims of the coronavirus this fall. Many athletes easily suffered from the disease and at the moment feel great. Among the players who have already recovered this fall are such players of teams as Bogdan Shust (Ingulets), Leonardo Duarte (Milan), Kaspars Dubra (Alexandria), Adrien Rabiot (Juventus), Leo Dubois (Leon) and some others.
What happens next?
Viral infection still keeps our entire society in a state of permanent anxiety. It is obvious that the situation will not change much in the near future, and even if the created vaccines are successful, their total implementation around the world will take years. But this does not mean that our life will now revolve only around this pandemic. Gradually, we will learn to live in new conditions. Whatever it was, diseases in life have always been and will always be. This means that this is not a reason to give up football and other sporting events!
In the meantime, all that world football has by now is the incredible financial losses that many sports clubs and associations deal with. FIFA has already allocated more than $1.5 billion to fight the effects of the pandemic. More than half of the members of this Association have already applied for financial assistance by submitting applications to the FIFA Central Committee.
