"Football Always Connects People" - Shkodran Mustafi
Arsenal defender Shkodran Mustafi spoke to beIN SPORTS about the first-hand experience of seeing the Coronavirus epidemic lay low his own head coach Mikel Arteta, and how we can all move on from here.
Arsenal’s Shkodran Mustafi has been in quarantine since the early days of March when their mid-week game against Manchester City was postponed. Now sporting a closely-shaven haircut, the defender was in good spirits, speaking to beIN SPORTS about the experience of hearing the news that head coach Mikel Arteta had been diagnosed with Coronavirus.
“It was a little bit scary at the beginning really because a lot of people, or a lot of us players, didn't know so much about the virus,” Mustafi shared. “Now every day if you watch TV they’re talking about it and every day you learn something more or you hear something different, but at (that) time we were not so much (informed) so we were all scared.”
Arteta’s diagnosis - and the decision to quarantine the Arsenal first-team - was perhaps the most important factor in suspending the Premier League season, though the Spanish coach is now fully recovered. Mustafi and his team-mates had been in contact with him throughout the ordeal, however. “We were hoping that he was going to be fine soon. We had some video meetings and even if we didn’t see each other he explained that he had the virus and he felt bad for a few days but he overcame it quite well and now everyone is healthy.”
There had been controversy after Arsenal had played Olympiakos in the Europa League at the end of February, after Evangelos Marinakis - the owner of the Greek club - tested positive for the virus a few days before the revelation that Arteta had been stricken as well. Marinakis, who also owns Nottingham Forest in the Championship, had been on the pitch and changing rooms.
With Arteta now recovered, however, the focus is now on Project Restart, and one of the major hurdles that clubs and players need to cross is how to build up their match fitness, having been away from training and games for over two months.
“It’s not the same as if you were to do training with your team-mates but I think if you are professional enough I think that you can stay fit. We ordered treadmills and bikes and all this so we could train at home at the beginning,” says Mustafi, a World Cup winner with Germany in 2014. “You could stay fit. Obviously it’s not like a training session, because we are playing a team sport, so it’s not easy to keep yourself fit when you’re alone, but I think fitness-wise it was okay. We had the possibility to stay fit.”
Some players and officials have claimed that it will take weeks of intensive “contact training” before games can be resumed with the same level of competitiveness, with clubs currently only allowed to organize strictly-controlled sessions with small groups of players still maintaining social distancing parameters. Arsenal were in fact the first club to do so, though Mustafi still yearns for the games themselves.
“I miss football in general!” he admits, laughing. “I want to just go out and play outside of my house with my teammates but you know, you need people to play football. It’s not a single sport, you need your friends and your colleagues to play with you but at the moment that is not possible, so of course I’m looking forward to doing it again.”
Born in Hesse, Germany, the former Hamburg youth prospect spoke with a positive, optimistic tone. Mustafi, who celebrated his 28th birthday under quarantine, believes that the inevitable resumption of the Premier League will be beneficial to everyone.
“I think that football always connects people. Not only football but I think sport in general is connecting people and you know, we have all been in quarantine now for such a long time and we have been watching so many Netflix series and movies and everything and I would love to see football again,” he says in earnest. “And I would love to play football again. But I think at the end of the day the most important thing is to respect the situation as it is and I think we will play as soon as it’s safe to do so. I think we all have to respect it.