Every day Minnesota United manager Adrian Heath wakes up at 6 a.m. and the first thing he does is look at his phone. Have the latest KOVID-19 tests for players and staff arrived? Is anyone positive on the test? With four positive tests in his team since the beginning of October, his tension is palpable.
They got a warning before the start of the day, Heath told ESPN. And when I get a call, it’ll be like Oh, my God, and your stomach will drown again.
Every other day we check, and you cross your fingers and say: Can we stay another week? Can we live another week without anyone else falling? And then something like this: Did we isolate them soon enough? So it’s very stressful for everyone involved.
With MLS Cup play-offs beginning Friday, detention will not help Heath position – on Sunday (7:30 p.m. Eastern time, live-reporting on ESPN) – and 17 other playoff team managers playing in Colorado. The same can be said of the MLS headquarters, where the question arises: Can the league survive the off-season without the team losing the game because of the KOVID-19 flash? Such a scenario would put a big star on an entire season.
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On the surface the League shows a confident front and there is good reason to be optimistic.
In many ways MLS has done a good job to get there. He found that he managed to get into more than 97% of the scheduled matches. But numbers can tell a different story.
This 97 percent is explained by the fact that MLS has reduced its regular season schedule from 34 to 23 games per team and has not yet received all games. Since the 25th. In September, 130 games were scheduled and 12 games were cancelled or postponed. While the regular season has left some room for manoeuvre, after the season one precious little setback has been built into the match schedule: 17 games are scheduled in the next 22 days.
MLS has not yet published its post-season protocols, but they will most likely contain specifications that will require an order with numerous positive tests for KOVID-19 to be removed from the playoffs. The League refused to comment on this article.
I’m not sure there is a real way to develop games in the post-season, said an MLS GM who asked not to be identified because the protocols were not completed.
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The situation of the COWID 19 pandemic in the United States is of particular concern. According to the New York Times, the seven-day moving average of new cases reached a new record on 14 December. November over 145,000, the highest percentage ever recorded in the United States. MLS has no immunity. According to press reports on the KOVID-19 test, from 27. Since August, 42 players and 19 employees of 26 clubs in the league have tested positive.
There’s simply no way, if you don’t test people every 12 hours, to fully protect the team, said Dr. Josh Schiffer, who is an associate professor at Fred Hutch’s Seattle Department of Vaccines and Infectious Diseases and whose job it is to treat patients with VIDOC-19. Whatever the strategy, I think there’s a risk that the team will pull out of the playoffs.
The probability of this happening is directly proportional to the number of cases circulating in the population. And now we’re in a terrible place, almost anywhere in the white world. Some states are worse than others. Minnesota and Colorado are particularly important countries for MLS. The number of such cases is even increasing exponentially throughout the country. This makes it much more likely that the player will become infected in the community than a month ago. There may be a bit of luck or bad luck here, but only the chance that something goes wrong is bigger than a month ago and maybe even bigger.
Given the risks involved, one wonders why MLS isn’t planning to return to the bubble format that worked so well at the MLS return tournament in Orlando in July.
Fault! The file name is not specified. MLS Cup play-offs begin against the growing cases of COVID-19 across the country. Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports
All these strategies have some chance of failure, Schiffer said. I think the bubble has the least chance of failure, and by failure I mean the team that has to give up [the play-offs]. It’s really worth thinking about. The moment you have young people who can walk freely in society, all bets are made.
Last month, MLS Assistant Commissioner Mark Abbott pointed out that the competition is not thinking of a bubble. A source familiar with the situation stated that the mentality of the League had not changed, referring to the request for a quarantine period for the installation of the bubble and the cost of the bubble, even for a modified bubble similar to that in the Major League Baseball play-offs. Another reason cited by the source is that there was not much appetite to return to the bubble, given the time players had to spend away from their loved ones.
This idea resonated with Heath, even in the recent positive attempts of his own team. When asked if moons could create their own bubble in an attempt to stay free of COWID-19, Heath replied that they could not.
The bladder’s working, he says. I think, given the [six months] of testing and everything else, it would be awful for us to say that: Okay, let’s give it a little more time, two, three, four weeks, whatever. I think we all hope the players are responsible enough to follow all the rules.
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As the end of the season approached, they began to focus again on compliance with protocols. Nobody wants to end up ruining their club’s season. One of the players from the playoff team said he recently got a call from the zoom department to go home.
The move is even more stupid. He doubles his message to his players to follow the protocols in everyday life.
As soon as they leave you, you get down on your knees before the gods to see if you can still pass, he said, referring to his players. So there hasn’t been a day since February that we [the fight against COWID-19] haven’t been mentioned. We’re in the last corner. Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t… Let’s not be as professional and hardworking as we are.
