Eimear Ryan: Should we be surprised that vaccine uptake is slow in the Premier League bubble?

Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp: 'I trust experts'

If the past two years have taught us anything, it’s that like the virus itself, we have to keep evolving. Old ways of doing things — especially in the winter when cases are at their peak — need to be re-examined and changed if necessary. This is often painful. There are a lot of people not flying home this Christmas; there’s a lot of parties cancelled. And long-running sporting institutions like the marquee Premier League St Stephen’s Day fixtures look increasingly under threat.

The stats that have emerged over the last week have been sobering. Ninety players tested positive, almost doubling the previous week’s tally; 10 matches were cancelled; and it emerged that 16% of Premier League players are still unvaccinated. Players and managers alike have spoken out about the madness of proceeding with the fixture list as planned. To this Monday morning quarterback, at least, packing the depths of December with fixtures doesn’t seem like the most sensible move.

It didn’t necessarily have to be this way, however. Whatever about allowing punters into stadiums with a new variant on the loose, you would think that the players on the pitch at least would be fully protected. St Stephen’s Day could at least be a televisual feast if not a day out. That extraordinary statistic — that 16% — can’t help but stand out like a sore thumb. Furthermore, it turns out that only 77% of Premier League players are double-vaccinated, compared to 98% of Serie A players, 95% of Ligue 1 players, 94% of the Bundesliga and 90% of La Liga.

Why such a gulf between the English league and its Italian, French, German and Spanish counterparts? Fixtures being cancelled and millionaires being inconvenienced are obviously some of the more benign outcomes of the pandemic, but it’s telling that vaccine uptake is so slow in the English soccer league specifically. Is it a holdover of that contrarian Brexit spirit?

Perhaps it’s not that surprising. The uptake among Premier League players reflects NHS stats for men in their twenties more broadly. There has also been a surge in gym cancellations, anecdotally reported, since gyms began checking Covid certs. Fit young men in their twenties are perhaps more likely than the rest of us a) to feel invincible; b) to be fastidious about what goes into their bodies in terms of food, supplements and drugs; and c) to listen to podcasts from Joe Rogan and other ivermectin truthers.

And yet in other ways, you would think that elite sportsmen would be an easy sell. First of all, they’re used to taking advice from experts — coaches, nutritionists, psychologists, physiotherapists, and yes, doctors — on a whole range of issues relating to performance. In a pandemic, surely the best way to ensure consistent performance is through vaccination; we can only assume that this point has been put to the holdout players, repeatedly and forcefully. Second of all, these elite athletes are not individual sportsmen but team players; personal discomfort for the sake of the team is baked into this philosophy. How can you claim to be a team player and yet put your coaches, staff, teammates and opponents at risk?

Jürgen Klopp, the wholesome dad figure not just of Liverpool but arguably the entire league, recently used his matchday notes to emphasise that in a time of increasing cases, vaccination is more important than ever. He has also stated that he will not sign an unvaccinated player.

“My message around this has always been simple and clear, I hope: I trust experts,” Klopp wrote in the programme for last week’s clash against Newcastle. “I follow the advice of smart, educated people who know their field because they’ve dedicated their lives to it and have studied it … I won’t apologise for the view I hold on vaccination, no matter how unpopular it might make me in certain sections of society.”

Here, Klopp identifies a key personality difference in the Covid vaccine debate: those who are comfortable outsourcing medical decisions to experts, and those who need to understand for themselves. I understand the latter impulse, but unless you’re a doctor or scientist specialising in infectious diseases, it’s a futile one.

Anyone who has argued with an unvaccinated person will have heard the phrase ‘I’ve done my own research’, when really this means ‘I’ve looked at the internet’. Unfortunately, all of our algorithms are primed to keep giving us more of same, keep scratching the same old itch. Click ‘like’ on one vaccine-sceptical video and you’re inviting in many more.

Klopp understands this dark internet undercurrent very well. “Ignore those who pretend to know. Ignore lies and misinformation. Listen to people who know best. If you do that, you end up wanting the vaccine and the booster.”

Klopp’s directness and unmitigated support for the vaccine is refreshing when other commentators and stakeholders, like Thomas Tuchel, have been both-sidesing or deflecting the issue. Managers may protest that they are only experts in soccer, not vaccines, but being a manager in these conditions means that you have to take a stand one way or the other.

Premier League players were living in bubbles long before the rest of us; they are surrounded by people who affirm and uphold their worldview. We know that shaming unvaccinated people doesn’t work; it just causes them to double down. The only thing that seems to work is incentive, because this doesn’t require the person to change their views. Until the league itself steps in, how managers choose to incentivise their players to get vaccinated will be up to them.

Steps like this will become increasingly necessary; as has been pointed out many times, soccer players can’t work remotely. We don’t want to be in a position where St Stephen’s Day fixtures are being decided by managers facing off in the latest iteration of FIFA on Xbox, a tub of Roses on the couch beside them — although actually, that would be quite the spectacle in itself. My money’s on Klopp.