Strikers ‘at most risk of infection’
STRIKERS will be most at risk of exposure to the coronavirus once Premier League football returns.
Centre forwards could spend up to 11 minutes in close proximity to an infected player, according to a study in Denmark. It comes as players’ fears over Project Restart continue to grow with a number of Premier League stars having voiced concerns over attempts to bring football back.
Researchers from Aarhus University tracked player movements in 14 Danish Super League matches to measure how often they would come within 1.5m danger area of an infected player. Each match was analysed as though just a single player was infected, with each game then simulated again and again until everyone on the field had been the one to carry the virus. They found, across the 15,750 results, that players would spend an average 87.8 seconds in close proximity to the infected player — just under a minute and a half. If more than one player had the virus, the study said the average exposed time would be multiplied by the number of those infected.
‘My first thought was that it was not very much, small numbers,’ associate professor Thomas Bull Andersen, one of the leads on the study, told The Mail on Sunday. ‘But then when I looked closer at the numbers, we noticed those big differences between positions. In a match you have players that have zero seconds and the most was nearly 11 minutes.’
Strikers, centre backs and central midfielders were the most exposed with goalkeepers least at risk. The highest recorded score was a striker at just under 11 minutes but on average centre forwards were exposed for around two minutes. In response, Allan Randrup Thomsen, professor of virology at the University of Copenhagen, told Danish publication Videnskap: ‘We have to be careful not to get too hysterical. For me to see, there are no problems with regular, old-fashioned football. American football and rugby I would probably be concerned about because there is very close contact, but in football you usually have only short-term body contact, so I think it is pretty safe to play.’