"When players are affected by the virus and they come back, it's not done by snapping their fingers. Even they feel it, it takes time."

The observation is made by the coach of the French world champions, Didier Deschamps, who remarked in December that the contaminated players "have been led to additional, more serious injuries."

The examples are numerous.

Lionel Messi, infected during the holiday season, did not play again until Sunday, a month after his contamination, and admitted to having needed "more time than expected to be well".

PSG star Lionel Messi during a match in Rennes, October 3, 2021 LOIC VENANCE AFP / Archives

At Bayern Munich, Joshua Kimmich, long hesitant about the vaccine, suffered infiltrations in the lungs and missed two months of competition, while Paulo Dybala (Juventus Turin) admitted in spring 2020 that he "lack of air" and felt his "very heavy body" when resuming.

"Complications"

More serious cases remained rare: Nantes striker Jean-Kevin Augustin, affected by a "long Covid", spent more than a year outside the professional group;

the Montpellier Junior Sambia was hospitalized in intensive care.

But many coaches remain worried in recent weeks about the consequences of the virus in the short and medium terms.

The medical community wants to be reassuring.

"We do not have the impression of having more chronic pathologies linked to this virus. Rather, they are complications to manage, difficulties in recovery", explains to AFP Emmanuel Orhant, medical director of the French Federation. .

Bayern Munich midfielder Joshua Kimmich, June 16, 2020 before a match in Bremen Martin MEISSNER POOL/AFP/Archives

"We know that the virus has an impact on short-term ventilation data. With the flu, we can put the players back on the field as soon as they are better. This requires a longer rehabilitation time with the Covid", resumes this doctor who is a member of the "Covid commission" of French football.

"You have to be careful because these are not traditional injuries," confirms Nicolas Dyon, physical trainer who passed through Nice, Rennes and Saint-Etienne.

"We must favor a linear recovery to gradually raise the heart rate and keep the player under surveillance," he continues for AFP.

On the longer-term consequences, scientific studies are still rare, but "at the cardiac level, there are no sequelae", assures Dr Orhant who, in December 2020, counted 2.2% of cardiac pathologies out of around 350 players who tested positive: "All were mild and disappeared within a few weeks, and it is impossible to say that all were linked to Covid".

Montpellier Junior Sambia (c) congratulated by his teammates after a goal during a match in Brest, December 11, 2021 Fred TANNEAU AFP / Archives

Always unknowns

Contrary to medical data, researchers from the universities of Düsseldorf and Reading preferred to look at the statistics of the 257 Bundesliga and Serie A players infected with Covid-19 before July 2021. Their results are less optimistic.

The players affected indeed observe a lasting drop in their statistics: six months after their contamination, their performance index in the passing sector, for example, is still down by around 5% compared to their pre-Covid standards.

The researchers also note greater effects for players over 30, and, more worrying, also collective consequences: the teams with the most players cured of Covid "perform" less well than their competitors.

"So far, the results suggest a permanent alteration in the player's abilities," said AFP James Reade, director of the economics department at the University of Reading and co-author of the study.

With a few caveats, however: "the majority of players had not been vaccinated" at the time of the study and "this remains a complicating factor", tempers this academic.

Another unknown, the differentiated effects of the variants: "With the Delta variant, players were often +KO+ for a few days, but then came back surprisingly quickly", remarked Nicolas Dyon.

Dr Ohrant continues: "We can no longer talk about Omicron in the same way we talked about the first infections, which were much nastier. Today, most players have almost no symptoms."

© 2022 AFP