Premier League stars to bring own food, wear masks and use three changing rooms per side in post-coronavirus plans

IT will be football — but not as we’ve ever known it before.

Not for the fans, of course, who will only be able to watch from home when games return behind closed doors, perhaps for the rest of 2020 and even beyond.

Premier League stars are set to don masks under new post-coronavirus plans

Yet even more so for the players and managers, the backroom staff and even the bus drivers and security guards.

Premier League chiefs have promised they will only be able to agree a restart when they get the green light from the Government.

In Germany, though, where the 36 top clubs agreed yesterday to seek a resumption of Bundesliga and Bundesliga 2 games on May 9 if they are allowed, league bosses have drafted a detailed set of instructions that must be followed, to the letter, for games to take place.

The sheer scale of the demands demonstrate just how football post-coronavirus will be, as Sky Sports famously claimed at the launch of the Premier League in 1992, “a whole new ball game”.

From training-ground regimes through to the number of people allowed inside a stadium at all stages of a matchday, the Germans have got out their clipboard.

And while English football might make a few tweaks, the requirements to put health and safety first suggests Prem bosses may opt for essentially a cut and paste job to compile the rules and regulations over here.

In Germany, before anybody is allowed into the stadium “all hygiene and insulation measures” will be applied to ensure that no infected players or officials are on the pitch.

That means everybody, including players, on match-day duty — Bundesliga chiefs say there will be around 322 people in the stadium and immediate area at kick-off time — will be required to confirm they have shown no possible Covid-19 symptoms in the previous 14 days and detail any tests they have taken.

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Dressing-room areas must be equipped with hygienic facilities and be disinfected before the arrival of the players.

Under the requirements, with social distancing very much to the fore, clubs are advised they should use “several buses” to transport players to the ground, with players and staff separated.

If that is not possible, then nobody will be allowed off the coach unless they are wearing face-masks.

All the coaches must be sterilised and disinfected and while home players are advised to arrive in their own cars, if they are bused in there must be a significant gap between the arrivals.

Even then, both teams must have separate routes to their dressing rooms and then be kept as far away from each other as possible.

Ideally, clubs are asked to re-arrange the changing area so that the starting teams, goalkeepers and substitutes all get stripped in different rooms.

Despite all the checks, clubs have been ordered to “minimise” the amount of time players are in the dressing room, with the largest possible rooms set aside for team meetings.

In the dressing rooms, players will have to bring their own food — which must not be shared.

They must also have individually named water bottles, to prevent any unspotted spread of potential illness. Any players using fitness equipment must wear gloves and face-masks with the machines cleaned before and after use, with medical staff also donning PPE.

Treatment tables will be moved further apart, with machinery such as ultrasound equipment thoroughly cleaned between uses.

All doors should be left “as open as possible” to prevent door handles — where virus spores can live for hours — being touched.

Similar rules will be imposed at training grounds, where fans — regularly allowed the chance to watch Bundesliga stars in action — will be banned and extra hand-cleaning facilities must be installed.

The players have been urged to recognise they will be under the spotlight as never before.

League chiefs wrote: “In the stadium, the public’s view of professional football, the teams and players in the current situation becomes bigger than before.

“We urgently ask for exemplary behaviour regarding hygiene and insulation measures outside.”

And that will be just the start of the completely altered matchday experience.

Teams must not use the same tunnel to access the pitch, even for pre-match warm-ups, which must be “phased” so that the number of players and staff on the field is minimised.

Boots and other equipment will be checked by match officials at the dressing room door and the teams must enter the pitch separately.

There will, of course, be no “player escorts” or team mascots but nor will the players line up for photographs, with pre-match handshakes also stopped.

But rules will also apply to the substitutes and coaching staff on the sidelines when the match is in play.

They must socially distance themselves on the touchline.

While the managers’ technical area will still exist, it will be minimised.

And behind the bosses, there will be at least one seat — preferably two — between each player or staff member in an enlarged “dugout” area likely to extend into the empty stands and which should see the seats covered.

When the matches finish, shirt swaps are, unsurprisingly, not allowed.

Teams should leave the pitch through their own tunnels individually and also depart the stadium at different times.

Players must only shower in small groups, staying two metres apart, and preferably in individual cubicles, although, if possible, they should wait until returning to their hotel rooms or their homes.

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And with normal media facilities other than seats in the stands closed, post-match press conferences will take place virtually, with the minimal number of journalists taking part.

It will be very different, a “new normal” that could last for months.

Yet if that is the price the football has to pay in order to be able to play, it will have to be paid. There will be no alternatives.

Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk