COVID-19 (football).sav

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to have a noticeable negative impact in professional football. Numerous studies have shown the detrimental effect the infection has on athletes. However, comprehensive data on how COVID-19 has directly affected the performance of professional football players is still lacking. The aim of this study was to investigate the changes in performance of professional football players before and after an COVID-19 infection. The participants were 10 professional footballers from a team that played in the first division of the Slovenian football league, during the 2020/21 season. As soon as the players returned to first team training their performances levels were measured. We measured the following variables: total running distance covered, running distance covered in different speed categories, average heart rate and heart rate time in two different time zones. We combined the collected data for each player into weekly intervals. To determine the impact of SARS-CoV-2 on players’ performance, we compared the collected data before and after the COVID-19 infection.