December 19, (THEWILL) – Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp has stated that the club would not recruit any player who has not been vaccinated against COVID-19 in the January transfer window.
Klopp has spoken frequently about the necessity of vaccinations, but football has recently been chastised for lagging behind in vaccine uptake.
According to a survey of EFL players, 25% said they will not takethe COVID-19 vaccine.
In clarifying his opinion about whether vaccination status will have an impact on January recruitment, Klopp stated: “We are not close to signing a player but, yes, it would be influential, definitely,” Klopp said, via the Mirror.
“If a player is not vaccinated at all, he is a constant threat for all of us. He doesn’t want to be a threat, of course, it is not that he thinks, ‘Oh my God, I don’t care about the others,’ but he is and we have to find different scenarios.”
From an “organisational” standpoint, Klopp further clarified, that isolation protocols dictate that any unvaccinated player could cause additional problems.
“He has to change in a different dressing room, he has to eat in a different dining room, he has to sit in a different bus, he has to drive in a different car,” the Anfield gaffer explained.
“From an organisational point of view, it gets really messy. If you really want to follow the protocols, it is incredibly difficult to do. If one gets Covid and he was in the last four days around him, he will be in isolation. If we have to travel to a country to play international football and we come back, he has to self-isolate – all these kinds of things.ll
“We have to do all these kinds of things, like building extra buildings for unvaccinated players, and it will not happen. Hopefully, it will not be necessary in the future.”
Jude Obafemi is a versatile senior Correspondent at THEWILL Newspapers, excelling in sourcing, researching, and delivering sports news stories for both print and digital publications.
