Real Madrid will be without the services of striker Mariano when they visit Manchester City for the second leg of their UEFA Champions League round of 16 tie. The Spanish international has tested positive for the coronavirus, and he’ll now follow the protocol, and isolate at home for the next two weeks.
Mariano, 26, is asymptomatic and reportedly feeling well. Real will visit the Etihad on August 7 looking to upend a 1-2 deficit from the first leg, staged at the Bernabeu.
“After the COVID-19 tests carried out yesterday on our first team footballers by the Real Madrid Medical Services, our player Mariano, tested positive,” the club statement reads.
“The player is in perfect health and is complying with the protocol of isolation at home.”
Deportes Cuatro add that the positive test result came from a routine round of testing, conducted after a post La Liga break, and that Mariano had no contact with other Real Madrid players.
Meanwhile a journalist from the Manchester Evening News tweeted that Los Blancos are training as if it’s business as usual, and there is no expectation, at least not right now, of this match getting canceled.
Real Madrid are “training as usual” ahead of Champions League game, sounds like they expect #mcfc game to go ahead
— Simon Bajkowski (@spbajko) July 28, 2020
Mariano has only featured five times this season, all off the bench, but he did score a goal in El Clasico. Madrid have won the UCL more than any other team in history, and by a very wide margin, but City are considered the favorites to win this tournament by most speculators, observers, prognosticators and pundits.
Although others believe City are just kind of co-favorites, with Bayern Munich the other front-runner.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net, which is partnered with News Now. Banks, the author of “No, I Can’t Get You Free Tickets: Lessons Learned From a Life in the Sports Media Industry,” regularly contributes to WGN TV, Sports Illustrated, Chicago Now and SB Nation.
You can follow Banks, a former writer for Chicago Tribune.com, on Twitter and his cat on Instagram.