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Virus anxiety could affect players’ performance
While football has resumed through the Bundesliga, it is not known just how much of an impact will the presence of virus have on the players.
Kolkata: Will anxiety of contracting Covid-19 affect performance as sport returns to a world where shin guards are as important as sanitisers? Will isolated training camps - where players are first disinfected - and being sequestered in hotel rooms alone ahead of games add to that stress?
Sergio Aguero has spoken of players being scared because they have children and families.
“They will be nervous and extra careful,” said the Manchester City and Argentina star. Brighton’s English forward Glenn Murray said there was no need to rush into restarting the Premiership in England where over 27,000 have died from Covid-19.
There have been reports of players struggling to train after recovering from the disease. Players of La Liga team Eibar have, in a statement, said they “are afraid to start an activity where we will not be able to meet the first recommendation of all experts, which is physical distancing.”
Going by what US epidemiologist Dr Anthony Fauci said, in a Reuters report, athletes have a right to be worried. Explaining why he thinks gridiron football won’t return soon in the USA, Dr Fauci said: “The problem with virus shedding is that if I have it in my nasal pharynx, and it sheds and I wipe my hand against my nose, now it’s on my hand. You see, then I touch my chest or my thigh, then it’s on my chest or my thigh for at least a few hours. Sweat as such won’t transmit it. But if people are in such close contact as football players are on every single play, then that’s the perfect set up for spreading. I would think that if there is an infected football player on the field… as soon as they hit the next guy, the chances are that they will be shedding virus all over that person.”
So it fits that guidelines for elite athletes issued in United Kingdom on Wednesday have an opt-out clause. Stress can lead to poor recovery and rash decisions during games, a Guardian report quoted performance psychologist Matt Cunliffe as saying. “But we also know that… fear of infection – we know that it does impact on the immune system, too.”
In that report, Martin Turner, a reader in the psychology department of the Manchester Metropolitan University, has said: “[Covid-19] is adding uncertainty into the environment per se. It is not a stress athletes are used to.”
There are other questions. How would a player who is asthmatic, like Derby County defender Curtis Davis who has said he finds it difficult to breathe with a mask, cope? How difficult would it be for a player to have a physiotherapy session in the time social distancing?
There are no clear answers but sport gives people a reason to cheer in difficult times. It was why Winston Churchill, no fan of football, wanted English-Scotland games to continue in the 1940s when the world was at war.
It can also be why German chancellor Angela Merkel green-lighted Bundesliga’s return on May 16, dropping her insistence on the two-week quarantine for players, according to reports in the German media. Equally important is the fiscal distress clubs would face should Europe’s top football leagues be frozen. The aggregate clubs would miss if the 2019-20 Bundesliga doesn’t finish is around 300m Euros.
“Getting going needs time, the country needs football as an economic support and the people need it as a distraction,” Real Madrid and Spain captain Sergio Ramos told Marca.com.
“The return of football is a sign that society is progressing towards the new normal,” said Javier Tebas, La Liga president in an interview to hindustantimes.com.
For Christian Seifert, the Bundesliga CEO, elbow tapping instead of hugs and high-fives, players doing their laundry and ‘Geisterspiele’ (ghost games because the stands would be empty) is the “best worst-case scenario.”
“Some experts say we might have to live with the virus for two more years. It is our duty to play games in the meantime,” Seifert told The Athletic, a sports website.
That’s why USA’s Major League Soccer is planning to get all 26 teams and staff to Orlando, Florida, in June and play behind closed doors, according to a Washington Post report. La Liga, Serie A and Premiership could resume next month. Tour de France has set an August start date and the PGA Tour is asking golfers to be quarantined in USA to be eligible when it tees-off again on June 11.
Fauci said increased testing is how sport can resume.
“To be 100 percent sure, you’ve got to test every day. But that’s not practical and that’s never going to happen. But you can diminish dramatically by testing everybody Saturday night, Sunday morning, and say OK, only negative players play.”
Like South Korea’s K-League, which resumed on May 8, Bundesliga has approved 25000 tests with the caveat that competition can be suspended if cases spike. The massive number of tests required is also a pointer to how difficult it could be for India to resume competitions.
With less than 8000 deaths among 175,000 affected till Friday, Germany has also dealt with Covid-19 better than England, Spain and Italy. Eintracht Franfurt’s board member Fredi Bobic has said 90 percent of Bundesliga players are willing to play.
So, after being mothballed major sport events will take baby steps in the next few months. To cope, athletes, psychology expert Turner said, need to tell themselves they are in a safe environment where they trust the medical staff. “But at the same time they have to try to maximise their potential in a less than ideal context. They have to ask themselves: ‘What can I do to maintain prowess and keep safe?’ Those two things could be opposing.”
Starved of live action, Bundesliga’s restart means the world can now watch a number of promising youngsters - Marcus Thuram, Giovanni Reyna, Alphonso Davies, Jadon Sancho and Erling Braut Halaand - and top guns like Thomas Mueller, Manuel Neuer and Robert Lewandowski in action.
“We should all know that people are now scrutinising us more intensely than ever before,” said Dortmund captain Marco Reus.
Turner said it is all right for players to be anxious. “Anxiety is there to tell us that things are not right in the environment. If a club was going back into [competition] and they weren’t anxious, that would be a concern,” he said.x
