Mikel Arteta opens up on his brush with coronavirus

The COVID-19 virus has taken a strong hold in the United Kingdom with the news this morning that the death toll has risen to 422 overnight, and it’s spread has been incredibly rapid. one of the first high-profile cases in football was the Arsenal boss Mikel Arteta, and he has now come out and told the story of how his infection started the total paralysis of Premier League football.

“Everything happened very fast,” Arteta told the Spanish television channel La Sexta (reported by the Guardian). “On Tuesday afternoon I was feeling so-so and I went to see the doctor but he wasn’t there. I got a call from the board of directors after training while I was in my car and they told me the president of Olympiakos had tested positive and everyone who had been in contact was at risk.

“I went on to tell them that I wasn’t feeling well and that we had a situation because we had lots of players that had been in contact with them. We had a game against Manchester City the next day and obviously we couldn’t put lots of people at risk without saying anything.”

“I had the test done last Wednesday and I was diagnosed on Friday, when we had to communicate it to the Premier League that I had tested positive,”

“Obviously all those who had been in contact with me had to go into quarantine, and consequently games had to be suspended.”

Arteta has thankfully got over the virus, although there are more and more in England are succumbing every day, but Mikel feels “very well now, I feel that I have recovered” and that it took three or four days for the symptoms to pass and for his energy levels to return.

Now it seems like everyone and his dog has the coronavirus now, and football is set to be disrupted for at least another month, and more likely to be for many months after that as well. It seems that all we can do is just stay at home, and hope that if you get it you are not one of the unlucky ones….