Scotland take on Croatia in their final group game of the European Championship and just 48 hours before that their midfielder Billy Gilmour has tested positive for the coronavirus.
The Scottish FA on Monday announced that the Chelsea youngster has tested positive meaning he will miss the match vs Croatia on Tuesday as the norms require him to isolate for 10 days.
The official statement read: “The Scottish FA can confirm that a member of the Scotland National Team playing squad, Billy Gilmour, has tested positive for COVID-19.
“Having liaised with Public Health England since the positive test was recorded, Billy will now self-isolate for 10 days and therefore miss tomorrow’s UEFA EURO 2020 Group D match against Croatia at Hampden.”
Despite coming in contact with Billy Gilmour, the rest of the Scotland players have been continuing their training as normal and this has seemingly not gone down too well with Gareth Southgate.
England players Mason Mount and Ben Chilwell are isolating because they came in contact with Billy Gilmour last Friday but the England boss cannot understand why the Scottish players are continuing with business as normal.
“I don’t know all of the factors behind that,” the England boss said, as quoted by Sky Sports. “Clearly it’s nothing to do with being on the pitch, so that’s why there’s no issue around teams training for example.
“I don’t want to cause a drama for Scotland, but if you’re all in the dressing room together, where does everything stand?
“Our medical people are dealing with all this, I’m being updated as regularly as we can be, which is every hour or so, there’s a little bit more information and we have to accept whatever the situation is and adapt to it, that’s the world we’re all living in across every family, and across every sport and every business.”
Why isn’t the Scotland team self-isolating?
Scotland have set up base in Middlesbrough for the EURO 2020 instead of their home soil and this decision has saved them from the clutches of a team isolation.
As per the Scottish government’s rules, everyone who comes in contact with a COVID positive patient will have to go through the mandatory self-isolation but since the Tartan Army have their training camps outside the country, this rule does not apply to them, despite Billy Gilmour testing positive.
Due to Scotland’s stringent rules both Croatia and Czech Republic decided not to set up base there as they announced in May that they will be training in their respective countries.
