Since January 3, the reduced gauges are back in sports arenas: 2,000 spectators maximum are allowed in theaters, 5,000 in open stadiums. However, getting a precious sesame for a meeting is less and less a guarantee to attend, with the multiplication of cases of contamination due to the Omicron variant.
Sport is no exception, and every day reserves its share of postponing meetings, sometimes a few hours before the start of hostilities. Spared by the Covid-19 before the Christmas holidays, the Football League 1 thus suffers the full force of the virus this time. The Angers – Saint-Etienne, Lille-Lorient and Montpellier-Troyes meetings, counting for the 20e day this weekend, have been postponed.
For the moment maintained, the other matches will be cut off from many stars, affected by the Covid-19. At PSG, for example, Lionel Messi, Angel Di Maria and Julian Draxler will be absent for the shock Sunday night against Lyon (9 p.m.), Wissam Ben Yedder will miss the meeting between Monaco and Nantes on Sunday at 5 p.m.
New health protocols
In order to maintain as many matches as possible, the Professional Football League (LFP) has implemented a new protocol on Tuesday, January 4. The rule for postponements does not change, a club may request one if it does not have a minimum of 20 qualified players, including a goalkeeper, on the official list of 30 declared. On the other hand, Ligue 1 and Ligue 2 players, vaccinated or not, will be subject to a mandatory test forty-eight hours before the match.
” An aberration “, according to Antoine Kombouaré, coach of Nantes. “I will be attentive and stressed because there is a first selection, it is the medical selection”, he added at a press conference on Friday, January 7.
Widely affected by the Covid-19, the Bordelais had, for their part, requested the postponement of their meeting against Marseille on Friday, without success. In this context, the Girondins bowed against OM at home for the first time in forty-four years (1-0).
“I don’t even prefer to talk about the Covid. If I talk about it and I say what’s on my mind, it will bring me big problems, as they say ”, reacted hot the Girondin defender Yacine Adli, at the microphone of Prime Video.
The calendar puzzle
On the rugby side, the same problems arise. This weekend, for the 15e Top 14 day, cases of Covid-19 in the ranks of Montpellier and Toulon resulted in the postponement of the Toulouse-Montpellier and Toulon-La Rochelle matches. The match between Montpellier and Toulon had already been postponed last weekend, as were four other games at the end of December.
# TOP14 The LNR noted that the RCT and the MHR were unable to play and therefore pronounced, in application… https://t.co/VvhF3bVBV2
This is akin to a puzzle at the same time for the Rugby League, which has implemented a protocol similar to that of the LFP (clubs can request a postponement if they have less than 23 able-bodied players), for the broadcaster Canal + and for the clubs. Finding dates for postponed matches is not easy in an already busy schedule: in addition to the Top 14, you also have to deal with the European Cup, or the Six Nations Tournament (February 5-March 19).
The Toulouse Stadium must, for example, look for three dates to play against the French Stadium, in Montpellier, and the London Wasps (in the Champions Cup). Slots will probably be found during the Six Nations Tournament, which risks causing a concern for fairness: Toulouse, the main providers of the blue contingent, will then be deprived of players like Antoine Dupont, or Romain Ntamack.
Towards Dantesque weeks
The sword of Damocles suspended above the stadiums is also above the halls. Scheduled for Saturday, the Cambrai-Tours meeting in the volleyball first division cannot be disputed, several players being positive in the ranks of Cambrai. Problem: Tours had already not been able to play against Nice on December 29, then against Le Plessis-Robinson on January 4.
“There are more and more games postponed, we will have to play them, but I don’t know when or how. It continues … We will face Modena [en Ligue des champions, le 12 janvier] without having played for a month “, worries Pascal Foussard, general manager of the club, questioned by The New Republic Wednesday 5 January.
Still in volleyball, the match between Terville-Florange and Chamalières, counting for the 15e Women’s League A day, will not take place either, three Chamalières players having been diagnosed positive for SARS-CoV-2 and placed in solitary confinement. Here too, the protocol is clear: a team can request the postponement of a meeting when three professional players in the squad have tested positive.
No confrontations between Orléans and Gravelines-Dunkirk or between Dijon and Le Mans this weekend in the first division of basketball, nor Brest-Bucharest and Metz-Kastamonu matches in the Women’s Handball Champions League. “We are probably heading towards a three-game week”, anticipated, Friday, Thierry Weizman, the president of Metz, quoted by The Lorraine Republican. Without knowing when it will be possible.