Vincent Kompany himself has pointed to the cause. “I caught a pretty nasty virus last week, and of course I didn’t listen to my body, so at some point it just said, ‘Stop now!’” the Bayern Munich head coach told the club.
The 40-year-old Belgian collapsed on Friday 23 October while watching a second-team session. He spent the weekend and most of the week in hospital for examinations before being sent home on Wednesday 28 October. Doctors concluded his earlier viral illness had triggered an irritation of the meninges, the protective membranes around the brain and spinal cord.
Bayern board member for sport Max Eberl set out the medical picture to reporters on Wednesday.
“It’s a meningeal irritation that caused this incident on Friday. He will now rest and take medication and I am certain that he will very soon be back on the touchline, operating at 100 per cent,” Eberl said, according to Sky Sports.
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Eberl was also keen to detach the episode from the demands of the job.
“This is a condition that could strike any one of us. This has nothing to do with the pressure associated with the Bundesliga,” he said, per Get Football News Germany.
Danks: no timeline, health first
Assistant Aaron Danks, who has taken first-team sessions this week alongside Rene Maric, declined to put a date on his boss’s return.
“I still don’t think there is any timeline on it. It’s obviously a really positive step in his road to recovery,” Danks told reporters, via Sky Sports.
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Dressing-room reaction
Jonathan Tah said the squad had been shaken by seeing a head coach collapse at the training ground.
“I’d be lying if I said it didn’t affect us, because we’re all human beings,” Tah told Get Football News Germany.
Midfielder Tom Bischof, 21, described the response inside the squad in family terms, with players and staff leaning on one another through a week most of them had never experienced before.
Dortmund on Saturday, Atletico after
Danks and Maric are in charge for Der Klassiker against Borussia Dortmund on Saturday, with a Champions League tie away to Atletico Madrid three days later, as Goal reported. Neither club nor coaching staff has set a date for Kompany’s return to work.
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