This Friday, Mauricio Pochettino recalled how the Covid-19 pandemic was "something uncontrollable and which complicates everything".
The coach also noted that “the Covid factor is something unmanageable and affects each team in a totally different way.
Over time we will be able to discover how this disease affects the performance of footballers, but today we can only adapt in the best possible way.
"
Adapting is what PSG has been doing since the start of the season with the Covid, which has not spared it.
Right-back Alessandro Florenzi and midfielder Marco Verratti are the latest to contract the disease, for the second time in a few weeks even for the latter.
The two players were infected during the cluster of the Italian selection that they had yet left prematurely before the last playoff match at the 2022 World Cup.
Unavailable for the match against Lille, then in Munich last Wednesday, Verratti and Florenzi will also miss the trip to Strasbourg this Saturday.
However, the two men remain essential elements of PSG.
In the absence of Florenzi in Munich, Dagba, preferred to Kehrer, suffered terribly against Coman.
In the midfield, Gueye and Danilo, then Herrera, had a good match but neither has the know-how and the mastery of the position of Verratti.
Asymptomatic verratti, headaches for Florenzi
Therefore, the potential return to training of the two Italians in training on Monday awakens some hopes among the Parisian followers.
If Verratti was potentially expected on Monday, a doubt hung over Florenzi, who was thought to have the ten-day Covid protocol deadline only left last Saturday, when, after being put in isolation as a precaution on the morning of the match against Lille , he had finally tested positive 24 hours after Verratti.
But in view of the management of the procedure and the initial declarations linked to the appearance of the first symptoms, the PSG considers that the two men will therefore be able to resume on Monday.
If Verratti seems to have been asymptomatic for the occasion, Florenzi, he experienced headaches for a day.
"The aspect that we do not master well is very strong fatigue"
However, before showing up for training on Monday, both players will have to undergo numerous exams, including a series of heart tests, and be tested negative.
But their return to the lawns in no way guarantees a presence at the Parc des Princes on Tuesday.
Two questions will indeed arise for the Parisian staff: in what physical state will they come out of this phase of isolation?
And won't it be risky to launch them into a competition as intense as the Champions League?
The fatigue felt by Kean, who was positive for Covid in early March, but whom Pochettino had not considered fit to start in Munich, is not reassuring in this regard.
Nor his few minutes spent on the field at the end of the match where he seemed to suffer.
“We are still in a very specific population, with a high intensity of practice and boys who, at one point, put themselves in the red, underlined the doctor in physiology Jean-Bernard Fabre, in September.
When you're a pro player, you have the thrill of climbing.
However, the electrocardiogram does not allow us to see certain underlying pathologies.
This is why we recommend batteries of tests with certain cardiac markers.
Because fear is sudden death.
"
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Before then adding remarks which join those of Pochettino of this Friday: “The aspect which one does not control well, it is the very strong fatigue.
We have very little data on it.
Some patients find it difficult to extricate themselves from chronic fatigue.
What will it be for athletes?
We will have to be vigilant.
"