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Every day at 6 a.m., Minnesota United manager Adrian Heath wakes up and the first thing he does is look at his phone. Latest COVID-19 Testing Arrived for Players and Staff? Has anyone tested positive? With four positive tests on his team since early October, his tension is palpable.
“You have anxiety even before the day starts,” Heath told ESPN. “And if I get a call, it’s like, ‘OMG’, and your stomach sinks again.
“Every other day we get tested, and you cross your fingers and say, ‘Can we go one more week? Can we survive another week without someone else going down? And then the kind of,’ Have we isolated them fast enough? ‘ So it’s very stressful for everyone concerned. “
With the MLS Cup playoffs scheduled to begin on Friday, the apprehension will not ease for Heath, whose Loons host the Colorado Rapids on Sunday (7:30 p.m. ET, live on ESPN), and the other 17 managers. of playoff teams. The same is true at MLS headquarters, where the question is: Can the league make it through the postseason without a team having to lose a game due to a COVID-19 outbreak? Such a scenario would place a giant asterisk on a season full of them.
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Outwardly, the league projects a front of confidence and there are legitimate reasons for optimism.
In many respects, MLS has done well to go this far. He has touted the fact that he managed to get into more than 97% of his scheduled games. But the numbers can also tell a different story.
That 97% stems from the fact that MLS cut its regular season schedule from 34 games to 23 for each team, and still didn’t get all of its games. As of September 25, there were 130 scheduled games and 12 games. were canceled or postponed, which equates to one in 12. While the regular season allowed some leeway to reschedule games, there is a small slack in the postseason schedule: 17 games are scheduled for the next 22 days. .
The MLS has yet to release its protocols for the postseason, but they likely contain specifications that a team with multiple positive tests for COVID-19 will have to be eliminated from the playoffs. The league declined to comment for this story.
“I’m not sure there are realistic opportunities to make games once the postseason starts,” said an MLS general manager who asked not to be named because protocols have not been finalized.
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Most sobering of all is the state of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. According to the New York Times, the seven-day moving average of new cases reached more than 145,000 on November 14, the highest ever in the United States. The MLS has not been immune. According to the league’s press releases regarding its COVID-19 tests, from August 27 until now, 42 players and 19 staff members from its 26 clubs have tested positive.
“There’s just no way, other than testing people every 12 hours, to fully protect a team,” said Dr. Josh Schiffer, associate professor in the Division of Vaccines and Infectious Diseases at Fred Hutch Cancer Research in Seattle, and whose duties include the treatment of patients with COVID-19. “No matter what the strategy is, I think there is some risk that a team [having to withdraw from] the playoffs.
“The likelihood of that happening is directly proportional to the number of cases circulating in the population. And right now, we are in a terrible place, almost across the board. Some states are worse than others. Particularly relevant to MLS, Minnesota and Colorado are being hit hard. Really across the country, cases are growing exponentially. So the likelihood of a player getting infected in the community is much higher than a month ago. There is a little bit of good luck or bad luck that it could be involved here, but the probability of things going wrong is higher than a month ago, and could increase even more. “
Given the risks involved, a lingering question is why MLS made no plans to return to a bubble format, which performed so well at the MLS is Back Tournament in Orlando in July.
The MLS Cup playoffs will kick off against growing COVID-19 cases across the country. Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports
“All of these strategies have some chance of failure,” Schiffer said. “I think the bubble has the lowest risk of failure, and by failure, I mean a team that has to leave [of the playoffs]. It is really worth considering. The moment you have the youth who are free to go out into the community, all bets are off. “
Last month, MLS Deputy Commissioner Mark Abbott indicated that the league was not considering a bubble. A source with knowledge of the situation said the league’s thinking has not changed, citing the requirement for a quarantine period to establish the bubble, as well as the cost involved, even for a modified bubble like the one Major League Baseball used in their playoffs. Another reason cited by the source was the fact that “there was not much appetite” to return to the bubble given the time that players have had to spend apart from their loved ones.
Heath echoed that thought, even with recent positive testing within his own team. When asked if the Loons could institute their own bubble in an attempt to stay COVID-19 free, Heath said they wouldn’t.
“The bubble works,” he said. “I just think, in the back of [six months] Testing and all, it would be a lot for us to say, ‘Okay, let’s go back a bit,’ for another two, three, four weeks, whatever. I think we all hope that the players are responsible enough to comply with all the rules. “
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With the end of the season in sight, the emphasis on adhering to protocols has been renewed. Nobody wants to be the person who ends up ruining their club’s season. A player on a playoff team said he recently had an organization-wide call from Zoom to bring home that point.
Heath is even more direct. You are duplicating your message to your players that they follow the protocols even in their daily lives.
“Once they are away from you, you are in the lap of the gods to see if you can happen again,” he said in reference to his players. “So not a day goes by without someone not mentioning ‘We’ve been [battling COVID-19] since like, February. We are at the final bend. Let’s not screw it up by not being as professional and diligent as we’ve been. ‘”
Source: espn.co.uk
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