The handball revolt against the anti-covid protocol: "I don't understand it, the coronavirus is no longer dangerous"

• Profile Agustín Casado or how a war can change your career in handball

In the NBA, a league that already only tests players with symptoms, an outspoken anti-vaxxer,

, shines almost every night and will probably start the next All-Star.

In the last World Cup, France played the final with two starters,

and

, who had just suffered a type of SARS and caused a kind of outbreak in the concentration.

In the last Tour of Spain,

he tested positive and not only continued in the race, but ended up on the final podium in Madrid as third overall.

Sport has overcome covid.

All sport?

No, a discipline, handball, still lives in 2020, with its protocols, its rules and its restrictions.

His players are starting to get fed up.

This Wednesday the Handball World Cup began with a France-Poland match and masks could still be seen in the corridors of the pavilion, meters of distance between players and fans and a general atmosphere of uncertainty.

Why?

For the trauma experienced a year ago.

«The International Federation has made a protocol based on past situations, in sanitary conditions different from those of now.

Players are a little restless, for good reason.

You can give a positive result even if you are asymptomatic and that conditions the World Cup, "says Juan José Muñoz Benito, the doctor from Spain, who makes his debut this Thursday against Montenegro (8:30 p.m., Teledeporte) in full.

Fortunately.

Because just 72 hours before the premiere, the entire team had to pass the relevant tests and this time there were no positives.

Other teams, such as Denmark, did lose references, such as the center-

.

But the memory of the last European is too alive in handball.

Then almost 120 positives were registered among all the teams, a full-fledged macro outbreak, and there was not a game without scares: the national team, for example, was left without

and

in the second phase and without

and

in the semifinals.

Possibly because of that, in this World Cup there will be controls again before the second phase and, above all, just before the quarterfinals: a decisive moment, the tension will return.

If then the two stripes appear in the test of

, leader of Spain, or of

, their goalkeeper, to give two worrying examples, they must isolate themselves for five days and they will not be able to play at least until the final.

A rigid rule, but not the most controversial.

"We want to wash whiter than white"

The World Cup is held between Poland and Sweden, two countries with a certain handball tradition, and some restrictions, such as the one that prevents players from approaching fans to take photos or sign autographs, have been lifted.

In these countries, in fact, a kind of campaign has been started for the IHF to relax its anticovid protocol in the coming days.

"I don't understand why they order that.

In Sweden the coronavirus has ended and is no longer considered dangerous since April.

It is a pity that we cannot experience the World Cup as we live here now," Sweden's assistant coach

said this week , who is by no means alone.

A colleague like

, the France coach, once again the main favourite, also raised his voice to complain about the limits imposed: «We want to wash a little more white than white and I don't see the reason.

Our neighbor, soccer, the most universal sport, has just played a World Cup in Qatar and I think that in this month and a half I have not once heard the words covid test or PCR tests.

At the moment, the International Federation has not responded to these claims, although it may have to if a player decides to break the protocol, as has already been threatened.

A few days ago, the Iceland goalkeeper,

, pointed out that the anti-covid regulations of the World Cup in Poland and Sweden are illegal and that we will see what he does if he by chance tests positive and isolates him.

"The tournament rules are stricter than the laws in force in the two organizing countries, so the players are aware that we can leave isolation at any time or refuse the tests," he said in a letter released through his social networks in which he also pointed out that isolation would go "against the protection of privacy and freedom of work" and that his colleagues "still deeply feel the trauma experienced with the covid in the last European".

The sport has overcome the pandemic, but handball is still at it.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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