Arsenal Women forward Caitlin Foord will self-isolate for 14 days, Matildas coach Ante Milicic has confirmed. Foord was part of the Australia team that played against Vietnam in Cam Pha on Wednesday.
Arsenal have liaised with the UK government and have taken the decision that she self-isolate. That means Foord will miss games against Spurs, Bristol City and PSG in the Champions League- assuming all of those fixtures go ahead as Coronavirus takes hold in Europe.
“Caitlin Foord’s had her correspondence from Arsenal, so she’ll be in quarantine for 14 days,” Milicic said. Other Matildas stars playing in England like Sam Kerr and Chloe Lugarzo won’t face the same measures.
It means that Arsenal are struggling to find 11 fit players for Sunday’s North London derby with Katrine Veje, Daniëlle van de Donk, Dan Carter, Kim Little, Lia Walti and Beth Mead all injured and Katie McCabe suspended. Manager Joe Montemurro has also returned to Australia for personal reasons.
The risk of having the men’s team infected with covid had the ManC game postponed, but the women’s team being more or less out of players isn’t?
Possibly more to protect City players given that some of ours had already been in contact with a known carrier at the Olympiakos game.
It really doesn’t matter anymore, by next week all games will be canceled for few months atleast. The big question is how to end tournaments or squeeze in fixtures later. Main thing is that everyone will hopefully be safe or recover.
How big/small is the women’s squad?
I count that as 8 players missing (including Foord), so if they have a 25 player squad, that should leave them with 17 players to choose from. But you say they struggle to put together a starting 11? O.o
I guess I never really thought about how small the squad might actually be. ^^;
Check the Arsenal website; the women’s first team is 20 players 2 of which are on loan and 3 of which are goalkeepers. Take 8 out of the 18 remaining squad and we have 10 players so even with Pauline in goal and Manu playing outfield we still do not have a full team! This is why even without 8 missing we still have Academy players on the bench for WSL games but they are not always available either. Sad state of affairs given the importance of games just around the corner. Let’s hope the Covid virus can work in… Read more »
Yea, this situation actually should help an Arsenal squad so short of players that not playing at all–for a while– is a major blessing
in disguise. Maybe some of the injured will FINALLY heal. And Foord will, we hope, be OK and ready to resume training in a few weeks.
And maybe Montemurro will be back.
The club vs country argument raises its head again!
Given that we have known about this virus and the measures in place to attempt to contain it for a few weeks what was going through management’s mind to allow Caitlin to play in Vietnam when the squad that employs her is so depleted already?
The rules for the women are basically the same as for the men. If the country requests you, the club has to send you or otherwise gets punished by FIFA. The interesting thing here is that there are no clear penalties anywhere in written form, so basically FIFA will do whatever they like to do. Just quickly I can remember 3 such cases: 1) West Ham declared Sakho unfit for international duty, but then played him in a friendly during the international break, they had to pay 100,000 swiss CHF. 2) The Brazilian FA legally requested 2 Brazilians playing for… Read more »
In that case can we claim from this clause of the FIFA rules?
“FIFA will continue with the Club Protection Programme, by which clubs are compensated for losses incurred due to players being injured while on international duty. The Club Protection Programme will therefore be extended to at least until after the end of the 2022 FIFA World Cup Qatar.”
We could have a quiet word with a friendly FIFA official. What’s his name again? Oh yes, Arsene Wenger.
best wishes to Caitlin, hope she is clear and if not, not badly affected.
Vietnamese here. There is no infected case in Cam Pha and only 44 cases in the whole country so Im pretty sure she wont catch it
I’m sure she will be fine too but there is paranoia in the West at the moment. As of last night 8 people had died in the UK from the virus all of which had pre-existing medical conditions. Compare that to 1782 people that died in road traffic accidents in 2018 and we are not banning travel by road and in the same year 77,800 people died directly as a result of smoking related illness and you can still freely buy cigarettes and tobacco. Agree the virus is bad news and we need to mitigate against it but some perspective… Read more »
How many people die or are killed in other ways really isn’t relevant to this at all.
The story doesn’t say why Foord, alone among the Australian NT players who went to Vietnam, is being isolated. Curious. Beyond that, Arsenal is almost a point where it has to forfeit games–that’s how bad it’s gotten. How is it that
Walti has been out for 3 months with a hamstring issue? A team with half its
players–and coach–missing.
So Caitlin Foord is self-isolating but Sam Kerr isn’t? Why is that? I don’t understand.
My understanding is that Arsenal have insisted on it. I am certain Sam and Chloe will end up doing it too.
If Caitlin is self-isolating let’s hope its back in Oz on a sunlounger!
All will become clearer by tomorrow. Mmm…Friday 13th!
If I were a gambling man, I’d put money on a total suspension of all pro-football male
& female until April. From an AWFC perspective breathing space to re-group & recover.
With the news this evening about Mikel Arteta and the closure of London Colney Training Centre and all AWFC facilities ample reason for postponement of Sunday’s NLD.
Obviously thoughts are with Mikel and anyone else who is unfortunate enough to contract Covid but the irony is from the women’s team perspective is that those who are not injured have, in the main, been away on international duty and are less likely to have been exposed to the virus than if they had attended normal training sessions! Let’s hope the FA see sense and put a temporary halt to proceedings and we can regroup in a month or two and play out the season into summer. Radio 4 had an interesting discussion this morning suggesting that the (men’s)… Read more »
The Club gave acted professionally and as put it’s Player’s First and as the FA Have announced that All Game’s are postponed till April all I can say is take care Caitlin & speedy recovery for our other players