The Professional Football League (LFP) finalized a new health protocol on Tuesday, January 4. Whether or not they are vaccinated against Covid-19, Ligue 1 and Ligue 2 players as well as their managers will now be subject to a mandatory test forty-eight hours before each meeting.
The new version of “Match organization protocol” transmitted to the clubs has also changed the duration of isolation imposed on players diagnosed positive, following new government instructions.
For those who have a complete vaccination schedule, it will now be seven days (or even five if a new test is negative), against ten previously. With an incomplete vaccination schedule, the isolation will extend over ten days, and only seven if a second test proves negative in the meantime, according to this document of around one hundred pages that Agence France-Presse was able to consult.
Concretely, a vaccinated player will be able to resume training a week after his positive test, on the sidelines of the collective however and in the absence of any symptoms related to the virus. This recovery phase should last at least seven days. “The collective recovery (training or match) is therefore at best on the thirteenth day for a player with a complete vaccination schedule with an early release from isolation”, specifies the document, against eighteen incompressible days previously.
Postponements of matches in perspective
On the other hand, the rule relating to postponements of matches remains unchanged. In Ligue 1, a club can request the postponement of a match if it no longer has a minimum of twenty players, including a goalkeeper, on its official list of thirty declared, i.e. from eleven players affected at the same time .
The L1 meeting between Angers and Saint-Etienne, initially scheduled for next Sunday, has already been postponed after the Angevin club announced the detection of nineteen cases in its group. Doubts also arose concerning Bordeaux-Marseille on Friday, the Girondin club being particularly affected, as well as Lorient-Lille on Saturday.
Since Monday and for a period of three weeks, the stadiums have also been subject to gauges set at 5,000 people as part of the measures to curb the Covid-19 epidemic. In its protocol amended on Tuesday, the League suspends the obligation for host clubs to grant seats up to 5% of the total capacity of their stadium to visiting supporters. “It is now up to each club visited to decide whether or not it wishes to provide places to the visiting club and, if so, in what proportion”, the document states.