It has been claimed that clubs with higher vaccination rates are looking to put pressure on teams where players are refusing to get the vaccine. Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp is among those that have spoken intensively about the need for players to take up the opportunity to get vaccinated and described those that don’t as ‘a threat’.
Jurgen Klopp said: “In a situation like this, let’s take our situation, 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. He has to change in a different dressing room, he has to eat in a different dining room, he has to sit in a different bus, he has to drive in a different car and from an organisational point of view, it gets really messy. As I have spoken about before, we have a very high take-up of the vaccine at our club and have done for a long time. It might be 100 per cent now or as close as is possible, so that’s important.”
Everton boss Rafa Benitez revealed in October that he was ‘encouraging’ his players to get the vaccine.