Premier League, suspension risk until mid-January

England overwhelmed by the Omicron variant. Leicester-Tottenham has also been postponed, a situation now on the verge of collapse. Several coaches who invited the leaders of the English league to intervene

From our correspondent Stefano Boldrini

December 16
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The Premier League is jumping in the air: a few minutes ago the announcement that Leicester-Tottenham was skipped and in the next few hours the communication of the postponement of next weekend’s matches could arrive, but there is a fear of a suspension of the entire activity football movement until mid-January. The Leicester match was canceled because the Foxes registered new positive cases and Tottenham itself, where the first Covid outbreak broke out, last week, Antonio Conte’s group is still in total emergency. The Leicester decision was preceded by controversy. Brendan Rodgers, coach of the home team, accused: “The Premier does not want to postpone the match against Spurs to respect the television schedule”.

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The point

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The Covid situation is explosive. Yesterday in the UK there were 78,610 new positives – an all-time record – and 165 deaths. In the emergency press conference of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the government’s scientific consultant, Chris Whitty, called on citizens to limit social contacts as much as possible, limiting themselves to “essential” ones. Football is overwhelmed like the rest of the country by the Omicron variant, associated with the Delta which, until last week, was the mutation of the virus prevalent in Britain. Brighton-Tottenham, Brentford-Manchester United, Burnley-Wartford and Leicester-Tottenham have been postponed so far. At the end of Brighton-Wolverhampton (0-1), the coach of the home team, Graham Potter, invited the leaders of the English league to think well: “We all want football to go on, but the conditions must be there to do so. . Health comes first. We need to understand if it is right to continue on this path ”.

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THE APPEAL TO STOP

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The situation is getting worse by the hour. The latest Manchester United bulletin reports 19 positives. In the press conference on Thursday morning, the manager of Brentford, the Dane Thomas Frank, asked the Premier to postpone the matches of this weed end and next week’s League Cup quarter-finals. Just at the moment when Frank was launching his appeal, the communication reached him live, in front of reporters, that in the last Brentford swabs four new positives have emerged, in addition to the previous nine.

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ACCUSE

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Tonight, after the postponement of Leicester-Tottenham, Chelsea-Everton and Liverpool-Newcastle remain on the schedule. The enlightened voice of Jurgen Klopp shook the conscience of the English football system: “There must be clarity on the names of the positives and on the real numbers. We have a right to know. In the event that I should contract Covid, and I hope this does not happen, I would have no problem making my positivity public for reasons of fairness “. The German coach has addressed yet another appeal to the players (and not only): “You have to get vaccinated. To protect ourselves and for others, for the whole community to which we belong ”. The underlying problem is precisely this. Calcium has a lower percentage of vaccines than the UK trend. By the end of October only 68% had received the first dose and 81% had stopped at the first. The results are under the eyes of the world: the deadly Delta-Omicron mix, which is leading to the collapse of the British health system, risks bringing British football to its knees again.

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