Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp expects more COVID-19 positive tests in the squad – Says players are surprised
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Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp has been pretty open regarding his stand against making the COVID-19 vaccination compulsory for every player ever since the pandemic was at its peak a couple months ago. Now that a significant number of Liverpool players have tested positive in the resurgence of the virus, the German gaffer was naturally put to some serious questioning.
He however, responded by saying that they had been very cautious about following the protocols and mentioned that the players were themselves ‘surprised’ by the test results as despite some earlier dubiety, all of them had been fully vaccinated.
Three of Liverpool’s star players- Virgil Van Dijk, Fabinho and Curtis Jones, all tested positive ahead of their Premier League match against Newcastle which prevented them from being a part of the squad. That was not much of a problem for the Reds though as they pretty comfortably defeated the magpies by a decent 3-1 margin. However, in the post match conference, Jurgen Klopp said that according to his assumption, there is a chance that many more Liverpool players will test positive for the virus soon. The situation confuses the Reds management as none of them have shown any symptoms.
What Jurgen Klopp said
Jurgen Klopp said in the conference, “We hope [it’s contained]. The situation is difficult for us, for the whole world. We pretty much woke up this morning and had three positive cases.”
“The process we follow now at the training ground is that before we enter the training ground we do a lateral flow test and go back in the car.”
The manager revealed that they have routine COVID-19 tests everyday before heading out for the training and thus there is a good chance that the three reports might be false. However, that also increases the chances of other such positive reports.
“We wait for the result and in these moments we had three positive tests. It’s obviously not too cool.
“We wait for confirmation, because there is still the possibility of a false positive, but for today, we couldn’t wait for that.
“I had to make the decision to send the boys home, so we were three players out, two of them would have obviously started today.
Despite the chaos that has been created recently due to the upsurge of cases, Jurgen Klopp does not think that there is a need to stop the Premier League yet as it would be then a hurried decision.
“It was of course not a reason to cancel a game tonight, or even ask for it. We will see how it now develops.
“This virus is now around us so long that it’s not really likely that it will stay at three. The boys don’t have a lot of spare time to go wherever where they could pick it up.
“All of them are fully vaccinated, two of them already had the booster, and it still can happen. That’s just how it is.
“But we have a really, really good chance that the boys get through it now without proper symptoms.
“So far they don’t have any symptoms, they were more surprised than us that they had it. But that’s what you have to accept and that’s what we do. Hopefully they are quickly back again.”
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Rishab Dutta
(794 Articles Published)