This is a recovery that raises its share of concerns. As the first football matches in Europe are looming, with the revival of the Bundesliga on May 16, several championships are trying to resume their activity, while trying to juggle the management of several cases of Covid-19.

German football, head of this return of football to Europe, is particularly watched. The authorities implemented two series of tests on players and supervisory staff, which revealed 10 positive cases in a first session of 1,724 tests, then two more in the following. Cologne, with three cases (two players and a physical trainer) and Mönchengladbach, concerned by two cases (a player and a physiotherapist), however, did not delay the resumption of training. The persons concerned were placed in quarantine.

But it is at the lower level that things have become more complicated in recent hours, since in Dresden, the entire staff and membership of the club has been placed in isolation after the discovery of two positive cases from Covid-19. Dynamo, the current good last in 2. Bundesliga, will therefore miss its resumption match on May 17.

Not enough to "question the whole season", do we hammer however on the side of the German League. For its director Christian Siefert, interviewed on Saturday by the German channel ZDF, "it has always been clear [...] that it could happen", even if he admits to dreading an evolution of the situation reaching "a level where he doesn’t is no longer possible to play ".

The Iberian Peninsula still pending ...

The Bundesliga, which is stepping up measures to try to limit the risks (behind closed doors, confinements), is not the only championship to have to deal with the appearance of cases of Covid-19. On Sunday, the Guimaraes club, in the Portuguese 1st division, announced that three of its players had tested positive.

Even if the people concerned "are clinically healthy, asymptomatic and in quarantine", as a press release from the club specifies, these tests could come to question a recovery that the local authorities hoped to set up by the end of the month . Especially since Guimaraes is not the only club concerned, since Belenenses, Benfica, Famalicao and Moreirense must also manage similar situations.

Spain, which is targeting June 12 to find the lawns, is also facing the same problem. La Liga has revealed the existence of eight cases of Covid-19 among the first two divisions of Spanish football, among which five players.

Four of them have been identified, "all asymptomatic and in the final stages of the disease". They are Yangel Herrera (22, Venezuelan defensive midfielder from Granada), Renan Lodi (22, Brazilian left side from Atlético de Madrid), Alex Remiro (25, Spanish goalkeeper from Real Sociedad) and Joel Robles (29, Spanish goalkeeper for Betis Seville).

England wants to resume, Italy delays

In the other major European championships, the situation is not frankly more advanced. The announcement of a third positive case in the Brighton workforce did not reassure England, where the goal of finishing the championship between June and August remains.

Monday, May 11, club representatives must meet to define the terms of this "Project Restart", which should not surprisingly act the implementation of restrictive measures (matches behind closed doors or on neutral ground, in particular).

A prospect which seems on the other hand quite far in Italy, where it is still "impossible to fix a certain date" for the resumption of football, it was explained to the Ministry of Sports in the course of last week. Serie A continues its inventory of fixtures, while collective training is still suspended. And in recent weeks, several clubs have announced that they have counted or have counted infected people, including Fiorentina (three cases), Torino (one case) or Sampdoria (four cases).

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