MANCHESTER: Each individual player’s behaviour will be “crucial until the end of the season”, the medical head of the Bundesliga and UEFA’s efforts to restart the game across the continent warned earlier.
Tim Meyer, the head of the Bundesliga’s new coronavirus task force and chairman of the UEFA medical committee, said that while the German league had produced the safest possible system for resuming competition, it was vital that players showed discipline and kept to the new rules.
The Bundesliga will become the first major league in Europe to resume action, on May 16, with games held without spectators and with strict restrictions due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Football has to give something back to the people now,” he told Reuters in an interview.
“That also means to be disciplined as a player. Keeping themselves away from the virus and the virus from them is the target. They need to be responsible.
“They are very public and need to show how to behave — on the pitch, play football as always but as soon as you leave the pitch, you are a citizen again and need to behave as a citizen in times of Corona,” he added.
Meyer said his task was to create the highest possible level of safety, based on what was “medically justifiable”.
“We do not think that any job, any profession in the country is 100% safe at this moment, as long as you deal with other human beings.
“Sometimes there are people who say, ‘there is still a little risk’. Yes there is. We will not be able to eliminate any small risk – we did a lot, we put a lot of measures in place, to make sure that infections from football are highly unlikely,” he said.
