A lot of people don’t get vaccinated in the Premier League because they’re afraid or don’t believe the stories. The Premier League says it has done as much as it can to get its players to accept the vaccines. Van Tam not only talked to the captains of the league’s teams, but he also made a video about the importance of vaccination and dispelling myths to help spread the word. He has been to the teams in person. Other clubs that are having a hard time getting their holdouts to get vaccinated have been given visits from experts who want to answer questions and ease fears.
A word that Molango used to describe how the clubs have helped is “played its part.” They want to make it as easy as possible for their players to get a shot. Jürgen Klopp, the manager of Liverpool, has been very vocal about the “moral” reason to get vaccinated. It’s not an option for players at Leeds United to get vaccinated for their teammates. At other teams, players have gotten vaccinated after hearing about their teammates who had Covid, or how their friends and coworkers have been affected by their deaths.
Those aren’t the only things that have been said about other teams. They’ve been accused of not giving enough help to young players or giving the impression that there was no real urgency. That, critics say, made room for misinformation to grow. One Premier League team at first told its players to get vaccinated on their own time. As soon as that didn’t get a lot of attention, the bosses dropped the hint again. Once the club realised it had hit a wall and was in need of help, they took the step of inviting a vaccination team to the training centre.
Clubs, on the other hand, are starting to change their ways. This summer, a lot of players signed contracts that said that they had to get vaccinated. As time goes on, agents expect this to become the norm: Klopp, like Steven Gerrard and Mikel Arteta, has said that his club would rather not sign unvaccinated players.
Internal rules are getting stricter, too. Players who haven’t been vaccinated can no longer eat with their teammates at least one Premier League club. They also have to change into their training gear before they get there or in their car, instead of in the dressing room. The Premier League is now thinking about changing its rules so that more people take the same precautions.
People who are in charge of keeping the players safe hope that taking a more active, more draconian stance will be enough for everyone but a few people who are very hard to please. All the league can do until then is fight the misinformation, change as many minds as possible, and hope the games can go on.
