Scotland are sweating over the prospect of losing more key players for their crunch Croatia clash with Public Health England investigating whether any of Steve Clarke’s squad are considered ‘close contacts’ of Billy Gilmour following his positive Covid test.
The camp have been rocked by the news Gilmour is out of the Hampden showdown and the Chelsea starlet and Wembley standout will now be forced into a period of self isolation, ruling him out of the last-16 if Scotland progress.
However, Clarke and his squad now face an anxious wait after it emerged health chiefs south of the border are investigating if others will be impacted.
Andy Robertson posted images on his Instagram story playing table tennis with Gilmour and John McGinn at the team’s base in the north of England.
And that is now being looked into, although SFA doctor John MacLean is understood to be confident there won’t be an issue.
The squad trained on Monday morning and returned negative test but the Public Health England investigation will now determine if anyone else will miss the game.
Their rules state that “a contact is a person who has been close to someone who has tested positive for COVID-19. You can be a contact any time from two days before the person who tested positive developed their symptoms".
It adds:
Anyone who has had any of the following types of contact with someone who has tested positive for COVID-19:
Face-to-face contact including being coughed on or having a face-to-face conversation within one metre
Been within one metre for one minute or longer without face-to-face contact
Been within 2 metres of someone for more than 15 minutes (either as a one-off contact, or added up together over one day).
Robertson posted a video and images on his Instagram page on Sunday but that has been removed from the Liverpool star’s page amid the uncertainty.
It’s understood that under UEFA protocol table tennis does not count as close contact as competitors stand two metres apart.
Although the rule regarding close contacts is set at two metres in Scotland, it’s just one metre in England.
