Napoli Vs Leicester: Rodgers Loses Seven Players To COVID-19 Ahead Of Europa League Clash

English Premier League club, Leicester City would miss seven of its players in Thursday’s decisive Europa League match against Napoli.

Speaking in a pre-match interview on Wednesday (yesterday), Leicester manager, Brendan Rodgers said the players have been infected with COVID-19 disease and illness.

Naija News understands that the British government had announced extra measures to curb rates of pandemic infections in England, including the introduction of vaccine passports for the first time.

The recent surge in cases of the Omicron variant is understood to have aroused fears in all competition and organizers have been up in doing to curtail the pandemic.

Recently, Tottenham Hot Spurs were reduced by eight players and five members of staff for their Europa Conference League tie with Rennes.

Speaking on his side’s effect of the pandemic, Rodgers said: “We’ve had some positive cases, some are generally not well, so we haven’t taken the risk.”

He added: “We will have seven unavailable, something you’ll see in time. You’ll see in the training tonight the ones who haven’t travelled. It’s been the last few days really. In general, you’re starting to see a few more cases and, for us, it’s always about the health of our players.

“Travelling to a foreign country, we have to respect travelling into Italy. We still have a strong squad here, but unfortunately, it’s not a fully fit squad.”

Leicester top a fiercely competitive group heading into the final matchday with all four sides still having progress to the knockout stages in their own hands.

The Foxes lead Spartak Moscow and Napoli by one point with Legia Warsaw, who host Spartak, one point further behind.

Rodgers said Leicester could have waited a further 24 hours to check the status of the ill players who are yet to test positive but have decided against doing so as a precaution.

“We’ve taken every single measure, in terms of arriving here in the safest possible way to our host country, we have to respect the laws and health issues here,” added the Northern Irishman.

“We’ve taken every measure to make sure everyone was tested.

“The players who were unwell, who we could’ve maybe given 24 hours to feel better, we couldn’t take any risk with those, so we’ve kept them at home along with the other guys who were deemed positive.”