Real Valladolid reject coronavirus test kits: There are people who need them more

The Primera Division relegation battlers believe there are more important priorities than testing their players for coronavirus

side have rejected the offer of coronavirus test kits, which would have been provided to the club by the league.

The Covid-19 crisis continues to hit , with more than 17,000 cases of the virus confirmed, while there have been more than 700 deaths, prompting the virtual shutdown of the entire country, including the suspension of professional football.

Numerous top-flight players have been tested for the virus and have proven positive, with , and clubs that have confirmed cases within their ranks.

Valladolid, however, will not follow suit as they have turned down the opportunity to test players, which was provided to them by the league.

“La Liga offered them to us [the tests] but we have not taken them for medical and social reasons,” club spokesman David Espinar said in a statement.

“No player has presented any symptoms and we believe that there are people out there who are much less well off than we are who need them far more than we do. It is those [people] who should have priority.”

The president of the RFEF, Luis Rubiales, had previously criticised clubs for taking testing kits away from more vulnerable members of society, and in particular the elderly, who are effected more dramatically by the symptoms of the virus.

“Knowing the lives of many people are at stake it seems out of place to me to use tests on footballers when there are people that need them,” Rubiales said on Wednesday.

“The result for the player is the same, if they are positive and don’t have severe symptoms they will be confined at home. Testing players seems unsupportive and absolutely anti-patriotic in these conditions.”

Valladolid find themselves fighting relegation in Spain’s top flight having picked up 29 points from 27 matches, scoring a mere 23 goals in the process.

Before the suspension of the league, which will stretch to the beginning of April as a minimum, they had lost successive games against and , leaving them only four points above Mallorca, the highest-placed club in the relegation zone.