Seven positives for COVID at Real Madrid!

The pandemic hits Real Madrid hard. The team is caught with cottons for Sunday’s game against Cádiz (9:00 p.m.) after, in the last hours, up to seven positives for coronavirus have been detected. The first two to fall ill, Modric and Marcelo, began to have cold symptoms on Tuesday afternoon, and were immediately removed from the team. Before that, it had been Heurtel and Pablo Laso who had tested positive in the basketball section … By then, the entity had already taken extreme precautions, toughened the protocol, which is already very strict in Valdebebas, and multiplied the controls, which were already daily.

And even so, Madrid has made official that four other players have fallen ill: they are Asensio, Bale, Lunin and Rodrygo, and our first technical assistant Davide Ancelotti have tested positive for COVID-19. In all cases, fortunately, the symptoms are mild. But those new positives, together with the injuries of Ceballos and Carvajal, complicate Ancelotti’s work for the penultimate league game before the end of the year. On the 23rd in Madrid the late game against Athletic will be played and it will be necessary to see, by then, what is the exact photograph of the team. All those affected from the first template in this outbreak had the complete vaccination schedule in place. In this way, the protocol indicates that they can play again when they test negative in a PCR test, without waiting to save any quarantine.

The protocol approved by LaLiga and the federation indicates that if there are 13 chips available between the first team and the subsidiary, the match must be played. On the other hand, there must be a minimum of five players from the first team on the roster (and, indeed, on the field of play). Under normal conditions, before the pandemic struck, there were 7.

In any case, Madrid breathes with some tranquility because this hard blow comes with the homework done, with a wide advantage in the table over the second, Sevilla (8 points) and over what seems to be its greatest rival, Atlético, of the that separates 13 points (although with one game less for the rojiblancos) after the white team won the last derby. In this sense, the situation is reminiscent of the one already experienced last season by the leader of the competition. Atlético suffered an outbreak that affected almost half of the squad… and ended up winning the championship.

In this sequence of events, Madrid has been forced to reschedule this Thursday’s training, which should have been held at 11 in the morning. Already with some more positives on the table (apart from Modric and Marcelo) on Wednesday evening, Madrid decided to follow this strategy. The players went to Valdebebas this morning and all passed a PCR without getting off the vehicle. It was not Isco, Nacho, Bale, Hazard and Mariano, nor Ancelotti’s son, Davide, members of the technical staff. They were under suspicion before the club confirmed the outbreak.

The problem for the white entity has been that soccer, basketball and even women’s teams share some of the common spaces in Valdebebas, such as some gyms or recovery rooms, dining rooms and recreation areas. In the women’s football section, cases have also been registered, but not in the first team where all the tests have been negative, if not in grassroots football. With this panorama, in Valdebebeas control continues to intensify due to the fear that more cases could appear in the next few hours.

False alarm in the first women’s team.

The concern also moved this Thursday to the women’s section, where a player from the subsidiary and another from the cadet have tested positive these days. However, the first women’s team dodged COVID-19, after giving all its players negative in the relevant tests. Thus, Toril has his entire squad available for the Champions League group stage match against the Ukrainian Kharkiv (today, 6:45 pm) at the Alfredo Di Stéfano. It should be remembered that the white team does not play anything and already has its ticket for the quarterfinals of the European competition in its pocket.

As for Real Madrid B, there are several players (Raquel Íñigo, Paula Partido, Sofía Fuente and Carla Camacho) who have had to return from the squad with the U-17 National Team for having been close contact with the infected footballer. His withdrawal from the call was announced these days by the RFEF. It should be noted that the Real Madrid women’s affiliate does not have competition until after Christmas and has suspended its training until January. Finally, all the results of the tests on the equipment and children remain to be known to know if there are any more positives. For now, the waters have calmed in the women’s section of Real Madrid.