The number of positive COVID-19 cases is increasing in Florida. Meanwhile, the Fire and the rest of Major League Soccer are scheduled to resume the 2020 season during a tightly quarantined tournament at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex.
During a media availability Tuesday, Fire coach Raphael Wicky said the situation in Florida hasn’t come up in discussion between him and his players. Wicky did say the team trusts the league to keep everybody safe.
“Should the league think that, OK, this is going to be unsafe, then we trust them that they will react to that,” Wicky said. “It’s out of our hands. We’re going to the tournament. There’s a big (amount of) trust from us to the league that they will do the best, a good thing and we’ll all be safe. Should that not be the case, I’m sure there will be a reaction from the league’s side.”
Slated to begin July 8, teams can begin arriving in Orlando for the MLS is Back Tournament as early as June 24. But with those dates looming, concerns about the coronavirus aren’t going away, and Florida appears to be on the wrong track.
Obviously, what will play out before MLS is scheduled to descend on the state is unknown. Regardless of what occurs, Wicky has a job to do, and as of Monday, that means running full team practices at SeatGeek Stadium.
“Everyone is happy to interact with each other again, to actually fight and compete in training again,” Wicky said. “The first two days were actually going well. As a coach, I was happy with what I saw.”
The Fire have returned to full team training for the first time since the league’s March shutdown. Following the stoppage, players were given fitness plans, and they were recently allowed to return to individual and then small-group training sessions, but none replicate the practices the Fire can now hold.
And that forces the players to adjust.
“It’s completely different than what they have done for the last three months. That’s just a fact,” Wicky said. “It’s different physically. You can run as much as you want. You can dribble as much as you want in a rectangle or a square. You can have small group training with patterns, passing drills, but no opposition. Now going back into action in full team training, the players as well, they say it feels completely different.”
When the Fire last convened as a full group, they had played two games but recently completed training camp. Now they’re going through what could be called a second camp, preparing to resume a season that had barely begun.
“It will take a while to get used to it, but (from) what I saw was actually good,” Wicky said. “The mentality and the excitement of everyone is very high, and as well from the staff. I’m very happy about that.”
