Villa report significant outbreak of COVID-19

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BIRMINGHAM, England, Jan 7, (AP): Aston Villa reported a “significant” coronavirus outbreak and closed their training ground on Thursday, a day before a scheduled FA Cup home game against Liverpool. The Premier League club canceled first-team training ahead of the match. “Discussions are ongoing between medical representatives of the club, the Football Association and the Premier League,” Aston Villa said in a statement.

The club said “a large number” of players and staff returned positive tests following routine testing on Monday, and they “immediately went into isolation.” Earlier, Southampton’s FA Cup game a g a i n s t S h r e w s – bury was called off after the third-division team reported a coronavirus outbreak. The third-round match was scheduled for Saturday at St. Mary’s Stadium. It wasn’t immediately clear if already tight schedules will allow the game to be played at a later date.

The Football Association informed Southampton and said its Professional Game Board will meet early next week “to make a decision as to what will happen,” the Premier League club said. Also Thursday, the Manchester City women’s team confirmed their game against West Ham scheduled for Saturday has been postponed. City reported “four positive COVID-19 cases and a number of other mitigating factors.” City’s men’s team has also been navigating through an outbreak. United States goalkeeper Zack Steffen again stepped in for Ederson – out after contracting the coronavirus – to start in City’s 2-0 win over Manchester United in the League Cup on Wednesday. Earlier in the day, reserve goalkeeper Scott Carson and midfielder Cole Palmer were added to the positive list.

City had six players missing for Sunday’s 3-1 win at Chelsea in the Premier League because they had contracted COVID-19 – Ederson, defenders Kyle Walker and Eric Garcia, midfielder Tommy Doyle, and forwards Gabriel Jesus and Ferran Torres. Three Premier League games were postponed last week following an increased number of positive tests at City and Fulham. On Saturday, second-division club Derby expects that manager Wayne Rooney and his entire first-team squad will miss the FA Cup match against non-league Chorley following an outbreak. Derby will instead send a group of under-23 and under-18 players to play in the third-round game, Derby chief executive Stephen Pearce said Wednesday. He said nine players and staff within the first-team bubble had tested positive.

Meanwhile, the English Football Association panel banned Edinson Cavani for three matches despite accepting the Manchester United striker was not racist and had not known his language was offensive. Cavani hadn’t been in England long in October when he posted a public message to a friend on Instagram using a Spanish term for Black people which he said was intended as an affectionate greeting.

The full findings of the FA regulatory commission were published on Thursday, explaining why the Uruguayan received the minimum three-game suspension in the regulations. “The commission were satisfied that the player wrote his reply in affectionate appreciation of a message from his Uruguayan friend and that it was not designed or intended to be racist or offensive either to his friend or others reading the content of the Instagram post,” the three-person FA commission said.

The FA argued that “a follower of English Premier League football would have understandably concluded that the words used were racially offensive.” After being released by Paris Saint-Germain, Cavani had been living in England for only a couple of months when the message was posted. The FA accepted he had not been “sufficiently exposed to the language and culture of this country so as to allow him to have understood that words that were affectionate and unoffensive in his native language, were unquestionably offensive in this country.”

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