Unvaccinated athletesare believedto be fueling the COVID-19 fixture issue in soccer, with the English second-tier Championship admitting earlierthat 25% of players across its three divisions refuse to get vaccinated.
While the Premier League hasnot provided vaccination numbers for its players since October when they had revealed thatthat 68% of players received two doses, the number of anti-vaxxers in the top division is expected to be comparable and is being blamed for the Omicron variant’s widespread disruption.
This weekend, at least 25 matches in the top four English divisions were canceled, leaving England considerably behind its European competitors. There are a few postponements in the Championship and League One, as well, with only four League Two games. Now, as a result, Liverpool coach Jurgen Klopp has vetoed his side from bringing in unvaccinated players.
Klopp puts Liverpool ban on players who refuse to getvaccinated
Jurgen Klopp of Liverpool looks on. (Clive Brunskill/Getty Images)
“We are not close to signing a player but I thought about it and yes, it will be influential, definitely. If a player is not vaccinated at all, he is a constant threat to all of us. He doesn’t want to be a threat. It is not that he thinks: ‘I don’t care about the others.’ But he is [a threat] and we have to find different scenarios.
“He has to change in a different dressing room, he has to eat in a different dining room, he has to sit in a different bus, he has to drive in a different car: from an organizational point of view, it gets really messy . If you really want to follow the protocols, it is incredibly difficult to do. If one [player] gets COVID-19 and he [the unvaccinated player] was around him in the last four days, he will be in isolation.
“If we have to travel to a country to play international football and we come back, he has to self-isolate. Of course, it is going to be influential. We have to do all these kinds of things, like building extra buildings for unvaccinated players and it will not happen.I trust experts. I follow the advice of smart, educated people who know their field because they have dedicated their lives to it and have studied it”, said the German boss in an interview, quoted by The Daily Mail.
