By announcing before the match in Lyon that Lionel Messi would “continue his post-Covid individual recovery protocol during the coming days”, PSG showed welcome caution.
This Wednesday in fact, the Argentine was still not among the players who took part in the collective session. Messi made his return to the Lodges camp last Thursday, after returning from Argentina where he had spent the end of the year celebrations but above all contracted the Covid-19 on Boxing Day. He then had to wait for a negative test to embark with his family for France.
If his return to the grounds of the Camp des Loges for a few strides had first given hope that he could apply for the trip to Lyon (1-1) on Sunday, this was ultimately not possible. After the announcement of his package, Mauricio Pochettino was questioned about the physical condition of the seven-time Golden Ball. “He is under medical supervision, that’s the only thing we can say,” he had simply indicated.
Under these conditions, Messi’s return to competition on Saturday against Brest in the league now seems uncertain. Fortunately for him and his physical condition, the internship in Qatar and the friendly match in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, scheduled for next week have been postponed. And he could be exempted from being convened for the two Argentina meetings scheduled during the international break (January 24 – February 2). But if the slowness of this return to training questions, the specialists want to be reassuring, like Alexandre Marles, former director of the club’s performance: “All that is normal, even when one is little touched ( Editor’s note: by the Covid), there is always a residual physical fatigue and we must be careful in this sense ”.
This is not the case for the situations of Gianluigi Donnarumma, Angel Di Maria, Danilo and Julian Draxler who were all present at the Lodges camp on Wednesday after observing the isolation requested by their positive tests for Covid-19 last week.
As for Neymar, who returned Sunday from Brazil and who continues, now without a crutch, his treatment protocol for his sprained left ankle hoping to be back by the end of January, he published a snapshot on Instagram where he appears in his hyperbaric chamber. Then a video where he goes through physical exercises indoors while showing his motivation for 2022.
As a reminder, Pochettino must also compose without three players who left for CAN: Hakimi, Diallo and Gueye from whom we learned on Wednesday that he had in turn tested positive for Coronavirus with the selection of Senegal.