“We can’t let club doctors take risks“, declares to AFP Emmanuel Orhant, medical director of the Federation and member of the” Covid commission “of the League, eager to”protect players’ health“before the resumption of L1 this Friday. This committee is responsible for recommending, in the event of Covid-19 circulating in a club, postponements of matches to preserve the footballers, according to a medical protocol which could further harden according to the restrictions of the government, explains the doctor in an interview.
Faced with the four cases of Covid-19 detected in the Marseille workforce, was the Marseille-Saint-Etienne reporter, initially scheduled for Friday, inevitable?
Emmanuel Orhant: “It was decided that from four isolated players, this requires caution as it means that the virus is circulating in the club. A player, we can say that it is a coincidence, a second or a third too, but a fourth we can not more. For the government, the notion of cluster occurs in three cases, and we told ourselves that from a fourth case, we no longer had control over the health conditions. The role of the Covid commission is to say “Be careful, restrictions are necessary to protect the health of the players but also that of the opposing team”. Objectively, there was only that to make as a decision. ”
Some clubs find the health protocol drastic and fear cascading postponements. What do you answer them?
“The origin is above all the rules set by the government. Sport is not above the law, we are thinking with the government but at any time it can impose restrictions on us, like in April when it decided that the sport could not continue. The protocol was written three or four weeks ago, we were not in the current conditions. It may not be valid in two weeks, depending on what the government decides. The clubs need to understand this. We think about health. The Montpellier player (Junior Sambia, hospitalized after contracting the virus, Editor’s note) has shown us that the Covid could also affect the football player. We cannot let club doctors take risks with the health of players. On the postponements, the health evolution does not allow us to know how it will evolve. A workout is three hours in a day. A player is therefore 9 pm next to manage his life. Everyone needs to understand that everyone who revolves around the players must be above reproach. Social distancing and the wearing of a mask should allow the curve to evolve downwards. Let us not forget that if the curve evolves upwards, whole cities will be confined, and we will no longer speak of three or four cases but of several weeks without a match.”
How can we explain that the major championships have ended their season without a hitch this summer, and that some others, like Belgium, have resumed without worry in recent days?
“We too had zero cases during the training period (June-July). It was very easy to finish a championship in June or July because the sanitary conditions were good. But we have to put it in context. At the moment in Spain there are also dozens of cases. Belgium resumed without any problem, maybe they are a little bit more spared from the risks surrounding the players, I can’t afford to judge. Maybe the circulating virus is very important with us, maybe their daily number of cases is different. There is no secret, today in France, the clubs of Marseille, Nîmes and Montpellier are affected, but these are three cities impacted by the Covid-19 in the general situation.”
Interview by Antoine Maignan for AFP.