Thomas Tuchel has once again reiterated his stance on the free choice for players to be vaccinated against Covid-19 as the fallout from Monday’s Premier League meeting continues.
The league and clubs have decided to plough on with the festive fixture schedule in the top flight despite seeing six games fall foul of Covid related postponements at the weekend.
Chelsea wanted their game against Wolves to be a seventh with only 14 outfield players available for the game due to positive Covid infections but their request was denied by the League.
News has since emerged from The Times that prior to Watford’s visit to Burnley last week, the match was called off just two hours before kick off specifically because some unvaccinated players had to isolate having come into contact with positive cases.
The Premier League announced on Monday that “92% of players and club staff have received one, two or three COVID-19 vaccination doses, with 84% of players on the vaccination journey.”
Tuchel, himself fully vaccinated, hasn’t taken as hard line a stance as his German counterpart at Liverpool, Jurgen Klopp, who has been incredibly vocal on players getting their full vaccinations as the Omicron variant spreads rapidly across the country.
Klopp said: “If a player is not vaccinated at all, he is a constant threat for all of us. He doesn’t want to be a threat, of course, it is not that he thinks, ‘Oh my God, I don’t care about the others,’ but he is and we have to find different scenarios.
“From an organisational point of view, it gets really messy. If you really want to follow the protocols, it is incredibly difficult to do. If one gets Covid and he was in the last four days around him, he will be in isolation.
“If we have to travel to a country to play international football and we come back, he has to self-isolate – all these kinds of things.”
Yet Tuchel still refuses to be drawn to give his opinion on whether Chelsea would sign unvaccinated players and whether any of those in his current squad who have not had their jabs are being unhelpful in the battle.
“I mean you can have an opinion, I can have an opinion but a player can also have an opinion,” Tuchel said ahead of Chelsea’s Carabao Cup tie with Brentford on Wednesday.
“Then there can be regulations around this, like when you arrive at work your employer can create an environment where you are not allowed to be in the building if you are not vaccinated. This can happen so you have to adapt to it and you have to live with the consequences.
"But we cannot force people to get vaccinated and I will not change my opinion on that. I am not the guy to comment on that, I am not the expert here. There are experts in this country, all over the rest of Europe. Ask them and ask me please about football.
"I will not get involved. I am vaccinated. I made the decision for me and that's it.
"You know that it's causing an issue. But it's not that we have all unvaccinated infected. We have vaccinated players who are positive.
"I don't want to get involved in pointing fingers and starting the hunt for non-vaccinated people. This is a choice to make. Leave it there.”
