The highlight of the football season, the final tournament of the Champions League begins Wednesday August 12 in Lisbon. But a few days before the launch of this competition in an unprecedented format due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the announcement of the positive control of two members of Atlético Madrid comes to stir up trouble.

The Spanish club, which faces Leipzig on Thursday in the quarter-finals (9 p.m.), will see its preparations completely turned upside down by these two positive tests for the new coronavirus. Two club members, whose identities have not been disclosed, had to be placed in isolation.

These two people "are confined to their respective homes" and their names "were immediately communicated to the Spanish and Portuguese health authorities, to UEFA, to the Spanish Federation, to the Portuguese Federation and to the Higher Sports Council," said Atlético in a press release published Sunday, August 9, after learning of the results.

According to the Madrid daily AS, they would be two players from the first team. If the information is confirmed, this gives rise to fears of further contamination. Indeed, the workforce had a collective training Saturday, precisely the day of the holding of this initial battery of tests.

☀️ ¡Buenos días!
🗞️ Esta es la #PortadaAS de hoy # FelizLunes #FelizSemana pic.twitter.com/aOuqhHHwZc

- Diario AS (@diarioas) August 10, 2020

According to Eurosport, while Atlético Madrid was due to fly to Lisbon on Monday, it will finally do so on Tuesday. "Beforehand, new PCR screenings will be carried out on all members of the delegation which is due to go to Lisbon", specifies the sports site.

Contamination is on the increase in clubs

The Spanish club is not an isolated case. Almost everywhere in Europe, contaminations are increasing within teams. In France in particular, the Toulouse club revealed four positive cases of Covid-19 on Saturday, while in Strasbourg four new cases were detected last week after the five cases already identified at the end of July.

⚠️ The club's details after the discovery of the four positive cases for # COVID19. The seven new tests performed all negative.

→ https://t.co/8EWJKEr4yG pic.twitter.com/JTT3cfpwES

- Toulouse FC (@ToulouseFC) August 8, 2020

Faced with this threat, UEFA, which had to organize a very condensed final tournament between August 12 and 23, hopes to succeed in creating a health bubble in the Portuguese capital like the one put in place by the NBA for complete the North American Basketball Championship.

The European football body is therefore planning a drastic protocol: each team will have to provide test results before going to Portugal, and will be tested again on the eve of its first meeting. Each positive test will impose isolation of the player at his hotel.

UEFA can hope that Atlético has managed its health protocol as well as Real Madrid had done in recent days. Real striker Mariano Diaz had indeed tested positive for Covid-19 before the eighth-final second leg of C1 on Manchester City on Friday, but this case remained isolated and did not in any way disturb the holding of the meet.

In any case, even if the situation of the virus in Lisbon, an alarming time, seems to presage a secure tournament, the slightest gap, the slightest case of Covid-19 in a team, the slightest isolation will lead to reactions in chain almost unmanageable at the heart of such a calendar, especially as UEFA is hammering all-out that it has "no plan B".

This "new look" tournament, which will now be played in single knockout matches, will begin on August 12 with the quarter-finals. The matches must be divided between the Alvalade stadium, where Sporting plays, and the Luz stadium, home of Benfica. The semi-finals are scheduled for August 18 and 19, the final on August 23.

The shift schedule:

Wednesday August 12: Atalanta Bergame (ITA) - Paris SG (FRA)

Thursday August 13: RB Leipzig (GER) - Atlético Madrid (ESP)

Friday August 14: Barcelona (ESP) - Bayern Munich (GER)

Saturday August 15: Manchester City (ENG) - Lyon (FRA)

#UCL The Final 8 🇵🇹 is complete 😍😍
Who will win on August 23 in the final? pic.twitter.com/JeB1yOC2ZL

- UEFA 🇫🇷 (@UEFAcom_fr) August 8, 2020

With AFP

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