Very few top-level football players have suffered deadly bouts of Covid, but the long-term effects of the virus are now being seen in the sport, suggests a study that may also affect players’ passing quality. There have been several high-profile cases of COVID-19 impacts preventing players from returning to the pitch immediately after testing negative for the virus. Bayern Munich midfielder Joshua Kimmich, who was not vaccinated, missed two months of action due to lung damage, while Juventus forward Paulo Dybala said he had “shortness of breath” when he returned in 2020 after testing positive. “Had to fight.
Even seven-time Ballon d’Or winner Lionel Messi admitted that he needed “longer than expected time to recover” after contracting Covid during winter break.
There have been some more serious cases in professional football.
Newcastle goalkeeper Karl Darlow spent three days on a hospital drip, Montpellier winger Junior Sambia hospitalized in intensive care and Nantes’ Jean-Kevin Augustin not starting first team play since 2019 due to prolonged Covid Is.
But many coaches have expressed apprehensions in recent weeks about the short- and medium-term effects.
“When players have the virus and then come back, it is not just with a click of the fingers. Even they realize it, it takes time,” said France’s World Cup winning manager Didier Deschamps.
Researchers from the universities of Düsseldorf and Reading looked at the results of a study in 257 Bundesliga and Serie A players who returned after suffering from covid, which suggested that performance levels also fell.
The study found that players’ passing success rates have dropped by up to five percent and footballers over the age of 30 have been more severely affected by the virus.
It also suggested that teams with the most players who had recovered from Covid had worse results than their rivals.
“So far, the results suggest a lasting change in player abilities,” said James Reade, director of the Department of Economics at the University of Reading and co-author of the study, with a caveat.
“Most of the players were not vaccinated (at the time of the study) and this remains a complicating factor.”
‘Longer rehabilitation’ time than flu
There have been reports of players battling cardiac arrest, including Gabon duo Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Mario Lemina, who both skipped the ongoing Africa Cup of Nations to recover from Covid.
But Emmanuel Orhant, the medical director of the French football federation, said there was no definite link between the virus and the increased risk of cardiovascular problems for footballers.
They found, in December 2020, 2.2 per cent of the 350 players who tested positive had cardiac issues.
“All were mild and disappeared within a few weeks, and it is impossible to say that all were linked to Covid,” Orhant told AFP.
But he did say that players were generally taking longer to recover from covid than to recover from flu.
“We know that the virus has an effect on short-term ventilation,” Orhant said.
“With the flu, we can get players back on the pitch as soon as they get better. This requires a longer rehabilitation time.”
But with the majority of cases in European countries now being caused by the Omicron variant, it is expected that the effects will be much less severe.
“We can no longer talk about Omicron in the same way we talked about infections earlier, which were too many,” Orhant said. “Today, most players have almost no symptoms.”
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