Corona case before the international match against Liechtenstein: Niklas Süle tested positive, four other national players left – sport
In more than a year and a half of the pandemic, professional football has quickly learned how to deal with the coronavirus in a routine manner. “We knew what to expect, and I saw a very relaxed atmosphere in the team,” said national team director Oliver Bierhoff on Tuesday afternoon at a press conference that they had originally planned very differently at the German Football Association. Instead of the upcoming World Cup qualifier against Liechtenstein on Thursday (8.45 p.m. / RTL) in Wolfsburg, it was again about tests, quarantine rules and decisions by health authorities.
On Monday evening, national player Niklas Süle was found to be infected with the corona virus. According to the DFB, the 26-year-old central defender has been vaccinated twice by Bayern and has so far been symptom-free. After coordination with the responsible health department and also Süle’s Munich club colleagues Joshua Kimmich, Serge Gnabry and Jamal Musiala and Karim Adeyemi from RB Salzburg in quarantine. You had traveled with Süle and were classified by the health department as “Category 1 contact persons”. They are brought back to their homes in isolation.
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In the same plane from Munich sat four other players, who are probably Bayern professionals Manuel Neuer, Leon Goretzka, Thomas Müller and Leroy Sané. They stay in Wolfsburg but become regular and their contact with the rest of the team will be reduced for the time being. National team doctor Tim Meyer did not want in detail what the reasons for the different classification of the health department are. He will not comment publicly on the players’ vaccination status. In addition to the duration and intensity of contact, this is only one criterion when assessing the risk of infection.
However, the Bavarian Infection Protection Ordinance, which is gold-plated for Kimmich, Gnabry and Musiala because of their place of residence, states that close contact persons are exempt from the obligation to quarantine if they are “fully vaccinated against Covid-19”. However, the health department can “order a quarantine in individual cases”. On Tuesday afternoon, FC Bayern announced that striker Eric Maxim Choupo-Moting had to go into quarantine as a contact person.
Kimmich recently confirmed that he had not yet been vaccinated because of “concerns about the lack of long-term studies”. That had sparked a big debate and earned him a lot of criticism, both in and outside of the football industry. SPD health politician Karl Lauterbach tweeted on Tuesday after the DFB press conference: “Schadenfreude is now out of place. I still hope that Joshua Kimmich will decide to have the vaccination. The vaccination protects against Covid, severe Covid endangers the playing strength. ”
National coach Hansi Flick has already reacted to the five quarantine-related failures and the muscular problems of Nico Schlotterbeck and Florian Wirtz. Leverkusen’s Jonathan Tah, Maximilian Arnold and Ridle Baku from Wolfsburg and Kevin Volland from AS Monaco were nominated again. This gives Flick 24 players. However, the preparation for the last two World Cup qualifiers against Liechtenstein on Thursday and in Yerevan against Armenia on Sunday have been significantly adjusted.
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The national coach retired to the hotel with his team on Tuesday. There were no external contacts, the morning training was canceled and rescheduled in the afternoon. “From noon today we want to leave that behind and concentrate fully on the two games,” said Bierhoff. The staging of the game in Wolfsburg is – as of now – just as little endangered as the farewell to Joachim Löw. The national team is already qualified for the World Cup in Qatar in a year’s time.
The current Corona case is not the first among the national team. In March, Jonas Hofmann had to leave the DFB quarter. Marcel Halstenberg was also not allowed to remain as a contact person. Before that, there had been a lot of fuss about several corona cases in the team of the then opponent Ukraine in November 2020.
In addition, several national players have been infected at their clubs. Last year, Ilkay Gündogan from Manchester City made an impressive statement about his suffering after his infection. Süle had to go into quarantine once in autumn 2020, but his test then turned out to be “false positive”. (with dpa)
