Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
After ‘mild’ COVID-19, Przybylko happy to be back training
In the larger scheme of MLS news, Kacper Przybylko’s contracting of COVID-19 in late March was significant, the first and still only active player to have tested positive for the virus.
But as Przybylko went about his recovery, he tried to minimize the import beyond focusing on feeling better. And nearly two months later, the whole ordeal seems little more than a blip on his radar.
“It was like a regular flu that I have every year,” the Union’s striker said on a video conference Thursday. “And after four days, I was just lying in bed, and right now everything is fine. I’m fully recovered and I don’t feel anything now.”
Przybylko is apparently not much worse for wear. Though COVID-19 has, in some patients, been linked to long-term lung damage and diminishment of aerobic capacity, Przybylko said he hasn’t seen any ill effects. He reported being short of breath in his first week back to running. But by the time he returned to individual workouts with the Union May 18, there were no lingering effects. If you read into Jim Curtin’s declaration Wednesday that every Union player improved their performance on a fitness test this week as compared to the preseason, that would offer quantitative proof.
In true soccer-player fashion, Przybylko’s only issue with being back was a half-joking jab at the turf at the 76ers Fieldhouse in Wilmington, where the Union have practiced for the last 10 days. The biggest thing he missed on daily fitness runs during at-home isolation was being able to work on the ball, and the individual workouts are filling that void.
“It’s amazing being back,” he said. “It’s not like a whole practice with the whole team, but you can see some teammates and sometimes they switch also the times. I just miss the jokes sometimes. We have all our fields but you can still talk to someone at a distance. It’s completely different than just running along the river. It feels great.”
The German-born Polish striker, who scored 15 goals last year, was most concerned about the virus spreading to friends and family he had visited just before his positive test and to his fiancée, whom he said has asthma. The 27-year-old was grateful to her for helping him through his convalescence, experiencing nothing more than “mild symptoms.” His fiancée never exhibited symptoms.
His teammates were a constant source of comfort, too.
“We talk about recommendations of movies, how we can do staying in this quarantine if someone is bored,” Przybylko said. “We’ve always been in touch, and that’s why we are becoming closer because it’s not like everyone was staying at home and just doing their own work. We were all the time keeping in touch with everybody and preparing for the next game, so that’s why we get closer in this kind of special situation.”
Przybylko’s gaze, as usual, is pointed decidedly straight ahead. He was happy to hear Thursday’s news that MLS has cleared the way for small-group training. While grateful to be back on the pitch, individual workouts lack the intensity, focus and camaraderie of group sessions. Emotionally and physically, moving past the individual stage would mark a significant step forward.
“Everyone just wishes that everything is going back to normal,” Przybylko said. “The proposal is changing every day. I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow or what’s going to happen in maybe two hours. I just want to be back on the pitch. I just want to have a normal season, finishing the season.”
• • • MLS’s announcement of smallgroup sessions carries the same caveats as other steps in the return to play. Such workouts remain voluntary and cannot conflict with the policies of each market’s government and health officials. Each team must submit detailed plans for MLS approval.
Many of the stipulations remain similar to individual workouts: Outdoor facilities only, social distancing, health checks, enhanced sanitation and hygiene, coaches and support staff in personal protective equipment. MLS’s plan requires players to be spaced at least 10 feet apart in a group with a maximum of six players occupying half a field. Players are unable to interact with members of other groups. Small groups allow passing to each other and shooting on a goalie, which is absent from individual workouts.
The Union, via a club spokesperson, didn’t have a timeline Thursday on when it might make the step to small-group training.
Like everything else in MLS’s attempted emergence from the coronavirus pandemic, the smallgroup workouts exist at a nexus of multiple forces in delicate balance. The club will need league and local government signoff. The Union seek that while trying to define where to train, with professional sports franchises able to operate in Pennsylvania counties that enter the yellow phase. Delco is scheduled to go yellow June 5.
Returning to Chester would allow the Union to use two grass fields at the Power Training Complex instead of one turf field in Wilmington. Currently, they can only have four players train per hour. If they return to the Power Training Complex’s side-by-side field, the Union could conceivably have a de facto full-team workout with 24 players on the field simultaneously.
Two of the three MLS clubs that hadn’t yet resumed individual workouts, the Chicago Fire and D.C. United, set dates to return this week. That leaves just the San Jose Earthquakes as not yet on the field, an important factor in when the league will move forward.