Atletico Madrid coach Diego Simeone tests positive for COVID-19
Atletico Madrid coach Diego Simeone has the coronavirus.
The Argentine wasn’t showing any symptoms and was in isolation, the club said on Saturday.
Simeone and the rest of the team were tested on Friday. The club did not say if anyone else was infected.
The Spanish league stopped play from March until June because of the pandemic. The top flight managed to finish the season in July without any major infections.
But as the virus has started to spread again in Spain, teams have reported infections in recent weeks. None have appeared to cause serious health problems for players or staff.
Atletico are scheduled to play a friendly at Cádiz on Tuesday. Like Real Madrid, Barcelona, and Sevilla, Atletico have their first two rounds of the Spanish league postponed to give the teams more rest after the competed in Europe in August. It plays its first Spanish league match on Sept. 27 against Granada.
Meanwhile, the resumption of the AFC Asian Champions League has taken a setback with seven positive results returned from COVID-19 tests conducted on all the participating teams in the West Asian ‘hub’ of Qatar.
The Asian Football Confederation confirmed on Saturday that five players and one official from Saudi Arabia’s Al Hilal and one player from Qatari side Al Duhail had tested positive for coronavirus.
Competition in the western zone restarts Monday with clubs from Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Iran, United Arab Emirates and Uzbekistan meeting in the regional ‘hub’ of Qatar, where all of the games will take place.
“Those who tested positive are under medical supervision in a quarantined environment as required by the safety measures and COVID-19 protocols put in place for the tournament,” the AFC said in a statement Saturday.
The AFC had also previously revealed that United Arab Emirates team Al-Wahda will be unable to travel to Qatar after several members of the club tested positive for COVID-19. According to tournament rules, Al-Wahda will have to forfeit all group games.
Whilst in Qatar all players and officials will be put under a ‘medical bubble’ to limit their movement only to the hotel, stadium and training sites.
