'I still don't know if I had Covid-19' - Wigan Athletic ace

Wigan Athletic loan star Leon Balogun has lifted the lid on his own personal brush with Covid-19.
Leon BalogunLeon Balogun
Leon Balogun

Balogun and his colleagues are currently training at home after the football season was postponed due to the global pandemic.

But the big centre-back, who’d impressed hugely since arriving on loan from Brighton in January, has been left to reflect on the possibility of being one of the lucky ones to have overcome the virus – without even realising.

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“On the last day of February, I was playing for Wigan away to West Brom when I got subbed off with 20 minutes left,” Balogun recollected. “I wasn’t feeling well.

“Nothing I took was helping, so I just said, ‘OK, maybe I’m just a bit off.’

“When I had arrived at Wigan earlier that month, I had not played regularly for my club, Brighton, in a while.

“And then after I came to Wigan I played four games in 15 days. Maybe I was just feeling fatigue?

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“I recovered and played our next game, at home to Luton, on March 7. By then the virus had spread from China to Europe.

“When I first heard about the virus I was like, ‘Oh no, it’s another outbreak in China’ — because they had already had SARS.

“When it spread to Italy, Spain and Germany, I began to get really worried. Still, I didn’t really think it was going to affect me, too.

“What made me really wake up to the virus was that it began to affect football. Games in Italy were being called off and played behind closed doors.

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“Then one day I walked into the training ground at Wigan and saw that there were way more hand sanitisers around than usual. That’s when I knew that, sooner or later, this was going to affect us all.

“The week after we played Luton, the virus was forcing games in the Champions League and the Europa League to be called off.

“We were preparing to play at Huddersfield. On the Wednesday before, I began to feel unwell. I was thinking, ‘This is odd. Did I not just go through this? I shouldn’t be feeling like this again.’

“Could I have caught the virus? I had recently taken the train from London to Manchester. Had something happened on the train?

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“On the Thursday I felt OK, but still not 100 per cent. When I woke up on Friday morning, the lymph nodes under my arms were swollen.

“I felt off. I went into training without shaking anyone’s hand, just in case I had the virus. The night before, Mikel Arteta, the Arsenal coach, had tested positive.

“When the medical staff saw me they said, ‘Mate, just go home. The games are gonna get called off anyway.’

“Could I have caught the virus? I went home and tried to relax.

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“I called my team-mates. None of them knew what was going on.

“A few hours later there was a statement from the Premier League and the Championship: All games that weekend were off.

“Over the next few days I felt ill. I had a slight fever, I was coughing. But it was nothing crazy. So yeah … in the end I was not too worried.

“But I was never tested. Did I have it or not? I still don’t know.”

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Balogun, a German-born Nigeria international, is out of contract this summer – but he accepts there are far more pressing issues going on in the world right now.

“Obviously my contract situation is not ideal,” he told the ‘Players Tribune’. “But when I think about it, I realise that I have been in far worse situations before.

“For instance, in 2014 I broke my metatarsal in a game for Nigeria, and then my club at the time, Fortuna Dusseldorf, decided not to renew my contract — meaning I had to spend several months unemployed.

“Besides, right now there are things that are far more important than football. So to suspend the leagues is only right.”