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Luiz Felipe, Miguel Matos and Luís Estanislau, Portuguese soccer coaches, lived and worked in Whuan, when the Chinese city became the epicenter of the virus that would take over the lives of everyone. After a stage in Portugal, they have returned to Asian territory and tell how the new normal is being.
Soccer coach Luiz Felipe says life in Wuhan is still “normal”, even with rules like wearing a mask. “I do what I want. If I have to go to a restaurant, I will. If I have to go to a mall, I will. If I have to go everywhere, I will, as long as I follow the rules. Life, inside what the pandemic is is normal ”, he describes Lusa.
Repatriated to Portugal in early February, along with 19 other Portuguese citizens who lived in the city, then in confinement, 55-year-old coach returned to China at the end of July to resume work at Hubei Chufeng Heli, a third-tier Chinese team.
Upon arriving in Asia, Luiz Felipe underwent several screening tests at the airport and was transferred to a hotel where he was quarantined for two weeks, having received three meals a day without leaving his room.
Upon his return to the ninth most populous city in China, with around 11 million inhabitants, the Portuguese-Brazilian coach found the “completely controlled situation”, especially since the country continues to impose regulations such as wearing a mask in public space It’s in installing an application on the mobile phone to control the entrance of people to commercial surfaces. “We have to have the ‘green code’, which is an application on the mobile phone. Wherever we go, mainly shopping malls and large stores, we measure the temperature and we have to show that application. If the application is green, enter. If not it is thus, it will not enter ”, explains.
Luiz Felipe thus praises the ability of local authorities and the population to prevent the appearance of a second wave in a country that, according to the China Health Commission, has sustained 4634 deaths since May, between a total of 86,976 infected people since the beginning of the pandemic. “There are almost no cases, they do tests right away and remove people from circulation, until they are back in good shape. Sometimes they even surprise me. Some people who work with us tell us to be careful because cases arise in a nearby city. But this The city is in Sichuan province, 900 kilometers from here. And the cases are three or four. But they are alarmed, ”he says.
The technician also says that, in China, they have seen the new coronavirus as a “war”, while in Europe, there is a focus on “concerns for freedom”, and confesses to having felt the effects of the pandemic more between March and July, the period in which he was in Guimarães, the city where he resides when he returns to Portugal. “I felt that feeling that we can get infected. We began to have friends, family, close people who began to contract the virus. So we started to think that the virus was close ”, he recalls.
The Chinese zeal for the covid-19 pandemic extended to soccer, as, instead of playing games at home and abroad, third-level teams concentrated in Kunming, a city in the south of the country, to carry out the 2020 Championship. “We were in a place that had three hotels and several soccer fields. We were confined there for 40 days. We were there for five weeks and they gave us five tests. If any team came to the competition with a case [de infeção]I couldn’t get into the practice center ”, he remembers.
After two years in Wuhan, Luiz Felipe is about to return to Portugal, along with the rest of the Portuguese elements of the technical team, because the club will merge with a soccer academy next season. “The contract is over and we are not going to continue. We had a much higher championship than expected. But the club is over. In its place, a merger of this quarry with the club will enter,” says the coach who, throughout of his career, he has also represented Vitória de Guimarães and clubs from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Soccer coach Miguel Matos was confined to Wuhan at the end of January, when the new coronavirus spread through the Chinese city, and he contracted it in Portugal in September, after changing Hubei Chufeng Heli for Gil Vicente.
After returning to Portuguese soil at the beginning of February, on a repatriation flight coordinated by the European authorities, the porter technician was supposed to return to China at the end of July, but the Gilista invitation made him stay in Portugal, where he would remain. infected before the outbreak that affected 15 people from the club in September, among players, coaches and elements of the football structure.
“There is a striking detail, which, at the time, was not a joke: I escaped from the Wuhan virus and was one of the first in Gil Vicente to contract it. I had no symptoms. I was positive [no teste]. We soon had to go home. It was at that moment that an outbreak appeared. After 10 days, I took the test again and it came back negative “recalls Lusa.
For Miguel Matos, the year that is ending is marked by the change of club, more thinking about the family and professional progression than in “economic terms”, closures and changes in social routines.
“This really changed all of our lives and mine completely. When I went on vacation, I would join my brothers and a group of friends several times, to ‘kill you’. From February until now, I very rarely joined with them. It’s strange. The social part has changed completely, “he analyzes.
Since the covid-19 pandemic emerged in Portugal in March, the guardian responsible for the goalkeepers has limited outdoor practices, doing only “exercise and walking in hours with few people on the street.”
When he was isolated in Wuhan between January 22 and February 1, together with Hubei Chufeng Heli’s coach, Luiz Felipe, and physical trainer, Luís Estanislau, the coach could still go to the supermarket, but, after returning To Portugal, the Chinese government prevented people from leaving the city of about 11 million people by creating a pool of volunteers to deliver food. “The government took the food home. There was no other option. They took the vegetables, the pasta and they all kept the same products. Here, we could take that five to ten minute walk to do physical activity, while we were confined . There, in China, no “, clarifies.
This rule even led one of the goalkeepers of the Hubei Chufeng Heli, from the Chinese third step, to sign up for the volunteer pool to “do the training” and “stay in shape”, while the other athletes were limited to doing the exercises. recommended through the Zoom platform, in their homes, says Miguel Matos.
Convinced that it is important to “have football” at a time when people are more at home, the coach assures that he is “very happy” in Gil Vicente, but does not rule out, in the future, returning to China, a country where that “he really liked” working “.” Most people in Portugal have no idea what China is. It is a country from another world, “reiterates the coach, who has also played for the Braga Football Association, Desportivo das Aves and Santa Clara and Al-Nahda, a club from Oman, in the Middle East.
Luís Estanislau, 28, a physical trainer from the same club, returned to Wuhan at the end of July and, after a new quarantine, began preparing for a season that ran between September and November. “It was a much more intense season. There was little time to prepare the players tactically and it was very physically demanding. [foi] very demanding also mentally and psychologically, because we had to be confined to a space and we could not lead our normal life, “he emphasized, in statements to Lusa.
In a scenario in which the 21 teams in the competition, divided into two series, had to compete on Wednesday and the weekend uninterruptedly, training was planned to guarantee the “recovery” of the athletes, recalls the coach.
“Recovery was the main focus, from the ice baths, from the massages. Then, also [houve] the requirement to change players more frequently. In other words, the starting eleven changed 50% from one game to another, so that we could reach the end of the season with fresh players. “, clarifies.
Luís Estanislau’s routines, however, began to change earlier, when he was still in Guimarães, his ‘cradle’, and they guided the players from a distance, knowing that some of them did not have the best conditions to train in this way.
“When I was in Portugal, one thing that changed a lot was the online training. We had to change training every day, because some players did not have materials or space to do certain exercises. I had to rethink and change my plans a lot. training, so that the players do not physically fall “, remember.
After having seen the return to Portugal as positive, for “going home” and “being with the family”, the physical trainer confesses that he began to feel “bored” after a while, due to the current confinement in the national territory, And he says he missed going to the gym, something that made him buy some machines for home use.
“The gym is part of my daily life. It has been part of my daily life for many years and I have not given up. But then, in Portugal, I even had to buy several machines from a gym that closed. And I saw an opportunity there to buy several machines. I bought the machines and put them at home. Instead of going to the gym, the gym came to me, “he says.
After more than five months in Guimarães, the coach was quarantined for two weeks after his return to China and concentrated on the championship for the next three months, limiting himself to a life divided between home and work, but resumed a “social life normal during the month of December, going, for example, to restaurants and bars and even traveling to the interior.
“When I returned to Wuhan [após o campeonato], it was a normal life. I did my routine very normal. I took a few days off. I traveled to the south of China, to a fantastic island, on a hot day in December. It was good. Here in China, the virus is not very felt, “he describes.
After two seasons at Hubei Chufeng Heli, the physical trainer, who has already worked for Vitória de Guimarães and Sporting, has terminated his contract with the Wuhan club and claims to have received “several invitations” from other emblems to continue his career . in Chinese territory.
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