Argentina striker Gonzalo Higuain, star of Inter Miami, has tested positive for Covid-19 and will miss this Friday’s North American Championship (MLS) play-off qualifier against Nashville, reports the Miami Herald. His midfielder brother Federico, defender Leandro Gonzalez Pirez and two players from the reserve team have also contracted the disease, other US media add. Inter, without revealing the identity of the players, just confirmed that three players from the first team were not “medically authorized” to play this crucial game for the rest of the season of the club co-owned by David Beckham. The Florida side are not the only ones to be hit by a wave of cases, as at Los Angeles FC, four players including forwards Diego Rossi and Brian Rodriguez tested positive earlier this week. The latter two returned from South America where they played with Uruguay in qualifying for the 2022 World Cup. LAFC faces the Seattle Sounders on Tuesday in the first round of the play-offs. Unlike the NBA, which ended its season in a bubble at Disney World, MLS has decided that its finals will take place in the stadiums of its teams, which requires trips across the United States, where the pandemic s ‘accelerates again. This week, the daily rate of new Covid-19 cases was 167,400 on average, while that of the daily death toll exceeded 1,400.
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