Four Spurs players facing 10-day hotel quarantine after international break

[Mark_147]

BBC News - Premier League clubs will not release players for international games in red-list countries

Premier League will not release players

The Premier League says its clubs have "reluctantly but unanimously" decided not to release players for matches in red-list countries during September's international break.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[Goobers]

I am in a real quandary about this subject. I have never thought clubs should ever tan in the way of players representing their countries. BUT now travel is SO different I struggle to see how this is solved. Would it be better to have these qualifiers played like mini tournaments where the squads are kept in bubble over three or so weeks and play them in their entirety and perhaps have only 2 breaks for these qualifiers over the season to avoid the quarantine issue ?

 

[Black]

Rich people don't need to quarantine only the common folk

 

[cwy21]

I am in a real quandary about this subject. I have never thought clubs should ever tan in the way of players representing their countries. BUT now travel is SO different I struggle to see how this is solved. Would it be better to have these qualifiers played like mini tournaments where the squads are kept in bubble over three or so weeks and play them in their entirety and perhaps have only 2 breaks for these qualifiers over the season to avoid the quarantine issue ?

At this point I think the 10 day forced quarantine is harsh. Surely at this point in the pandemic vaccinated people can quarantine at home for 48 hours and take multiple tests over a 7 day period and we're going to be 99.9% as safe.

 

[Goobers]

At this point I think the 10 day forced quarantine is harsh. Surely at this point in the pandemic vaccinated people can quarantine at home for 48 hours and take multiple tests over a 7 day period and we're going to be 99.9% as safe.

I agree to an extent but numbers are increasing and I think the first minster of Scotland Is talking about another lockdown ! There are also increasing countries on the amber and red list.

 

[spursfan77]

BBC News - Premier League clubs will not release players for international games in red-list countries

Premier League will not release players

The Premier League says its clubs have "reluctantly but unanimously" decided not to release players for matches in red-list countries during September's international break.

www.bbc.co.uk

FIFA will shit a brick about that. It’s not normal times though and I think the clubs are perfectly within their rights to refuse. They owe a duty of care to their employees.

 

[Saoirse]

I am in a real quandary about this subject. I have never thought clubs should ever tan in the way of players representing their countries. BUT now travel is SO different I struggle to see how this is solved. Would it be better to have these qualifiers played like mini tournaments where the squads are kept in bubble over three or so weeks and play them in their entirety and perhaps have only 2 breaks for these qualifiers over the season to avoid the quarantine issue ?

Absolutely. Wenger's actually suggested this recently. The reduction in travel you'd get this way would mean less time wasted, less impact on the players, fewer carbon emissions, and would probably be a pre-requisite to the idea of having a World Cup ever two years.

Rich people don't need to quarantine only the common folk

I.... don't quite get how you've reached that conclusion in a thread about how no exemption is being made, even for extremely rich and well-known footballers.

 

[cwy21]

I agree to an extent but numbers are increasing and I think the first minster of Scotland Is talking about another lockdown ! There are also increasing countries on the amber and red list.

Without going into the politics of Qatar hosting, then maybe we've reached the point where we need to consider delaying the World Cup until 2023. CONCACAF still has 14 qualifiers left to play. South America has 12. If nations will not have access to a number of their best players then aren't we changing the competitive balance of what is supposed to be the biggest event for the sport?

 

[Saoirse]

Without going into the politics of Qatar hosting, then maybe we've reached the point where we need to consider delaying the World Cup until 2023. CONCACAF still has 14 qualifiers left to play. South America has 12. If nations will not have access to a number of their best players then aren't we changing the competitive balance of what is supposed to be the biggest event for the sport?

Problem is if you push it back to November/December 2023, that makes it even harder to fit the domestic 23-24 season in before Euro 2024 - unless they also make that Euro 2025 I guess

 

[Saoirse]

The other interesting thing for me is that Turkey is currently on the Red List. There's apparently a good chance they'll be removed this week. But if not, what happens if an English club is drawn to go there?

 

[cwy21]

There's a letter reported by an Argentinian journalist sent from Infantino to CONMEBOL saying there will be consequences if the Premier League refuses to release players. Trust me, this whole thing is far from over. Hopefully it all just ends with the UK making exemptions for the Premier League/Football League like they did for a wide variety of sporting events this summer.

If FIFA doesn't fight back hard against this and they allow world cup qualifiers to proceed with leagues not making players available then it very well could open up the cracks for the collapse of the international game. I bet we see some crazy s*** happen in the next couple of days.

 

[Tucker]

There's a letter reported by an Argentinian journalist sent from Infantino to CONMEBOL saying there will be consequences if the Premier League refuses to release players. Trust me, this whole thing is far from over. Hopefully it all just ends with the UK making exemptions for the Premier League/Football League like they did for a wide variety of sporting events this summer.

If FIFA doesn't fight back hard against this and they allow world cup qualifiers to proceed with leagues not making players available then it very well could open up the cracks for the collapse of the international game. I bet we see some crazy s*** happen in the next couple of days.

I think it’s far more likely that fifa compromise and just move the fixtures to countries that aren’t on the red list etc.

 

[cwy21]

Well now La Liga says they will support clubs not releasing players. Although there's is more to do with CONMEBOL extending the window two days for a third game and not covid/quarantine restrictions.

 

[wakefieldyid]

I think it’s far more likely that fifa compromise and just move the fixtures to countries that aren’t on the red list etc.

I think you're viewing this through a UK prism. As far as I'm aware, we are the only country that's designating these places as "Red List" and insisting on the hotel quarantine, so it's unlikely that FIFA will bend over on this. If anything, it's more likely that they will try to challenge the legality and consistency of the process by which the UK is deciding which countries have been forced onto the Red List. (As we know, diplomatic pressures have meant that several countries with worse metrics than current Red List destinations were excluded from the list, and there's no transparency from the UK's health bodies as to how they came to their decisions.) Almost every time that anyone has threatened to raise a formal challenge to the UK's Covid regulations, the government has quietly backed down, and I sense that this will go the same way.

 

[hellava_tough]

We have the tech to solve this problem really easily and the money in football is more than enough to pay for it.

Take the 3 most accurate test kits available currently. They have to be different brands.

These tests are administered in a quarantine facility, one after another, by different test teams.

If the results are all negative, then the chances of a false negative are almost 0%. The player is free to go.

If a positive result comes up on one of the 3 results then quarantine procedures are followed.

The whole process would take an hour (or less).

Either these test kits are accurate or they're not. The margin of error for any diagnostic testing equipment is nullified when you bring multiple pieces of equipment and different personel into the equation. But if we're not going to trust the tech involved, what on earth is the point of any of the COVID responses, vaccines included.

 

[Saoirse]

We have the tech to solve this problem really easily and the money in football is more than enough to pay for it.

Take the 3 most accurate test kits available currently. They have to be different brands.

These tests are administered in a quarantine facility, one after another, by different test teams.

If the results are all negative, then the chances of a false negative are almost 0%. The player is free to go.

If a positive result comes up on one of the 3 results then quarantine procedures are followed.

The whole process would take an hour (or less).

Either these test kits are accurate or they're not. The margin of error for any diagnostic testing equipment is nullified when you bring multiple pieces of equipment and different personel into the equation. But if we're not going to trust the tech involved, what on earth is the point of any of the COVID responses, vaccines included.

Not really how it works unfortunately. The kind of cases which tend to produce false negatives are similar across all test kits - early stages with low viral loads. The only way to reliably prevent these cases being imported is to wait for them to develop first, hence quarantine. And the reasoning for most of the countries on the Red List is their high rates of the Beta or Gamma variants, which haven't taken hold here yet but could be bad news if they did (while less transmissible than Delta, they have greater vaccine evasion, at a time when we're just starting to see evidence of waning immunity).

 

[hellava_tough]

Not really how it works unfortunately. The kind of cases which tend to produce false negatives are similar across all test kits - early stages with low viral loads. The only way to reliably prevent these cases being imported is to wait for them to develop first, hence quarantine. And the reasoning for most of the countries on the Red List is their high rates of the Beta or Gamma variants, which haven't taken hold here yet but could be bad news if they did (while less transmissible than Delta, they have greater vaccine evasion, at a time when we're just starting to see evidence of waning immunity).

These are test-kits designed for use in the wider population.

If they decided to do blood-work on individuals, then they could get an accurate result pretty quickly.

This method is expensive and logistically unviable for the wider population, but you could definitely set it up for a few PL footballers.

 

[cwy21]

Well I know I'm probably going to get hit with a bunch of disagrees and wtfs for this, but with Serie A and La Liga apparently joining in on this I think FIFA has no choice but to go nuclear and say that all players from these leagues are no longer allowed to play in this window. It is completely unacceptable for world cup qualifiers to have players from certain nations be allowed to play and other players not allowed to play based solely on rules set arbitrarily by random European governments. Let's see how well the England national team can do when they no longer have access to players from the first five levels of England, the top flight of Italy, and the top flight of spain.

 

[newbie]

We have the tech to solve this problem really easily and the money in football is more than enough to pay for it.

Take the 3 most accurate test kits available currently. They have to be different brands.

These tests are administered in a quarantine facility, one after another, by different test teams.

If the results are all negative, then the chances of a false negative are almost 0%. The player is free to go.

If a positive result comes up on one of the 3 results then quarantine procedures are followed.

The whole process would take an hour (or less).

Either these test kits are accurate or they're not. The margin of error for any diagnostic testing equipment is nullified when you bring multiple pieces of equipment and different personel into the equation. But if we're not going to trust the tech involved, what on earth is the point of any of the COVID responses, vaccines included.

you can’t test to show if someone doesn’t have corona,
But 5-7 days quarantine with testing each day would work

 

[cwy21]

Report that the four Argentine players including Lo Celso and Romero are still going and will take the consequences when they return to England.

Jugadores argentinos reportarían con Selección pese a negativa de EPL

Scaloni llamó a cuatro elementos que militan en Inglaterra para las eliminatorias de Conmebol.

www.mediotiempo.com