Position Statement of the Royal Spanish Football Federation for the Resumption of Football Activities After the COVID-19 Pandemic (June 2020)
Herrero-Gonzalez H, Martín-Acero R, Del Coso J, Lalín-Novoa C, Pol R, Martín-Escudero P, De la Torre AI, Hughes C, Mohr M, Biosca F, Ramos R. Br J Sports Med. 2020 Jun 16:bjsports-2020-102640. doi: 10.1136/bjsports-2020-102640. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 32546560.
“The Royal Spanish Football Federation created a task force, composed of sport physicians, sport scientists, and strength and conditioning coaches to constitute guidelines in order to resume football [soccer] activities after the COVID-19 pandemic. This task force established a framework based on scientific evidence to reduce health risks on the return to competition while fostering players’ fitness levels from the resumption of training activities for the teams prior to the first official competition.” The framework addresses clinical measures to assess players’ health, procedures to reduce COVID-19 infection, training recommendations to prevent injuries and encourage physiological readaptations, and change to the competition calendar and in-game regulations. The document is less than 2 pages and includes a supplemental table describing screening to reduce health risk on return to training and a table describing recommendations to foster player’s fitness levels (in two phases: retraining phase and performance phase)