Leicester City Manager Brendan Rodgers is the second coach in the Premier League to confirm that he had the dreaded coronavirus. He came out recently to reveal how life was when he had the virus.
Recall that Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta was the first Premier League manager to test positive for the virus. However, just like Brendan Rodgers, he has fully recovered and has since moved on with his life.
In the case of Leicester City coach, he said he contracted the virus in March. He noted that he didn’t feel much until a week after the match Leicester was meant to play with Watford on March 14 was postponed due to the fear of the virus.
While narrating his experience as a victim of the deadly virus, the 47-year-old coach said he totally lost his strength to move and breathe for days; and the experience reminded him of the time he clamped up Mount Kilimanjaro.
He said: “We had a week off when we were supposed to play Watford and then the week after that, I started to struggle.
“For three weeks I had no smell or taste. I had no strength, and a week after, my wife was the same. We were tested and both of us were detected with the virus.
“It reminded me of when I climbed Kilimanjaro. The higher you went the more you suffered from acclimatisation and the harder it was to breathe.
“I remember trying to run for the first time [after becoming ill] and it was hard to go 10 yards. I had no real appetite and it was a weird sensation of eating food without ever tasting and smelling what it was. It has made me really appreciate being fit and healthy.”
Brendan Rodgers is back to training
After he was dismissed as the coach of Liverpool in 2015, Rodgers went to manage Celtic football club in 2016. He spent less than two seasons at the club before he left to take up the coaching job at Leicester City in February 2019. The club was sitting on the 3rd spot on the league table before the coronavirus pandemic halted the season.
Rodgers and his boys have since resumed close contact training in line with Premier League directives and the coach said it has been good to have such training sessions again.
“I feel safe and we are very lucky in football that we are being tested twice a week,” Brendan Rodgers said.
“The last couple of days we have split into groups of 12, which is not normal, but how they have adapted has been really nice.
“The rhythm of it [training] has changed but I’m really pleased with them physically and it’s like they have never been away.”
