The magnitude of the COVID-19 “outbreak” at Chelsea has been made clearer by a report from the Telegraph this morning, which has revealed that eight (8!) players are currently in quarantine, with six (6!) of them having tested positive for the disease brought on by the novel coronavirus.
It turns out that perhaps for the first time in football media history, the tabloids have actually undersold the situation. The actual numbers are twice what they had initially reported!
The Telegraph have not confirmed which six of the eight have had the positive tests, but considering that two of the eight are only quarantining because of close contact with the others, it’s fairly easy to reduce the possibilities.
The eight players reportedly in quarantine are: Mason Mount, Fikayo Tomori, Tammy Abraham, Christian Pulisic (the four who were pictured together in Mykonos on social media), Jorginho, Ross Barkley, Emerson and Michy Batshuayi — all but Pulisic (who’s injured) would’ve been expected to be at training, but had been conspicuously (and unexplained-ly) absent from the pictures released from Cobham thus far.
Chelsea still haven’t commented or confirmed anything — hopefully they’re all asymptomatic and doing okay — and probably won’t since the quarantine period will be ending next week.
Chelsea have eight players in coronavirus quarantine, report @SamWallaceTel and @mcgrathmike
— Telegraph Football (@TeleFootball) August 27, 2020
Jorginho, Barkley, Emerson, Batshuayi, Mount, Tomori, Abraham and Pulisic are all sittting out of training. https://t.co/Q4eO9Hh0Yc