'It's just all over the place' - Celtic star wants international football cancelled

Celtic midfielder Nir Bitton has called for international football to be scrapped during the Covid-19 pandemic in a bid to quell outbreaks of the sort that led to the 28-year-old Israeli being laid low by the virus while on duty with his country.

Nir Bitton in action for Israel during a Euro 2020 play off against Scotland on October 8 - the day before his positive test for Covid-19 that has led to him believing it creates unnecessary risks to continue to play international football during the pandemic (Photo by Craig Williamson / SNS Group)

Bitton tested positive for Covid-19 after playing against Scotland in the Euro 2020 play-off semi-final last month, Celtic team-mate Hatem Abd Elhamed also going down with it days later. The two Israeli internationals contracted the virus on the back of Odsonne Edouard testing positive with the France under-21s squad.

All three players were lost to their club for the derby defeat against Rangers that followed directly on from the international break and manager Neil Lennon was also denied Ryan Christie for the encounter after the attacker was forced to self isolate for 14 days through being deemed a close contact in the Scotland camp to Covid-19 sufferer Stuart Armstrong

Bitton believes that asking players to step out of their club bubbles to join up with their countries creates added potential for the virus being spread. He considers placing international football in abeyance until the pandemic is under control as the only means to address these risks.

‘If it was my decision, I would cancel it,” he said of the international game. “But it’s not my decision. There is nothing I can do about it. Since I came back to Celtic in June we have been in a bubble. We are not allowed to go to restaurants. We are not allowed to have people in the house. We are in a small circle for four or five months already.

“Then you go to the national team and you are mixed up with a lot of players from different countries. You don’t know where they have been. It’s just all over the place. That’s why I am saying it is quite impossible to control it at international level. And you need to be lucky to not get it.”

Bitton did not enjoy such fortune, though he has recovered and been back in the Celtic senior set-up for the past week. His frightening experience of being so floored by Covid-19 leads him to caution that “no-one can really know how Covid is going to affect you” no matter “how old you are, or how fit you are.”

“I’m back to normal now but it was difficult during those first few days. I woke up in the hotel after the Scotland game [on October 8] with no sense of taste or smell. I went for a test and the result came back positive,” he said. “There’s nothing you can do about it. By the night it was coming at me from everywhere. I had a fever, my muscles hurt, my head was sore, it hit me really hard. It lasted about three or four days and I slowly started getting back to normal and now I feel back to normal.

"Before I got the virus I really underestimated it – but now I have completely changed my mind. It’s important to be sensible and do what the government asks us to do. It can affect you easy or very hard, but you don’t want anything to happen to your parents or grandparents. That’s the most important thing.”

A message from the Editor:

Thank you for reading this article. We're more reliant on your support than ever as the shift in consumer habits brought about by Coronavirus impacts our advertisers.

If you haven't already, please consider supporting our trusted, fact-checked journalism by taking out a digital subscription.