PITTSBURGH — When Vance McDonald found out that he tested positive for COVID-19 in the early morning hours after a Week 9 win in Dallas, he left the Pittsburgh Steelers’ facility and drove straight to his farm more than an hour away.
He called his wife and told her that he would be living in one of the farm’s outbuildings for at least the next 10 days.
“I came straight from Dallas with nothing but the clothes on my back,” McDonald said Friday. “I called my wife on my way home and said, ‘Hey, I tested positive. I’ve got to quarantine.’
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“My father-in-law is battling stage 4 cancer, so his white blood cell count is super low. We want to take it just as serious as if I’m quarantining from the facility. I’m absolutely quarantining when I got home.”
McDonald spent 16 days quarantining from his family on the farm, but he wasn’t alone.
He had the family’s new German shepherd, Nebo, who was raised by quarterback Ben Roethlisberger and his family during the pandemic and acquired by the McDonalds earlier this season.
“She’s like, ‘Obviously you’re staying out there, but I’m leaving you our German shepherd,'” McDonald said with a laugh. “I love Will Smith, so that movie ‘I Am Legend,’ it was just me and our German shepherd just moving throughout the farm by myself. I started talking to him like he was my friend.”
He can joke about it now, but the experience wasn’t an easy one. McDonald and his wife set up a checkpoint on the land where she could drop off food and clean clothes without being exposed. McDonald’s symptoms weren’t as severe as some cases, but he said he had “GI issues” on Thursday before the game.
To be safe, team doctors held McDonald out of Friday’s practice. But when he returned two negative COVID-19 tests on Saturday, he was cleared to travel to Dallas and play against the Cowboys.
“I felt completely normal and went into Dallas, played against Dallas and then got a message from our head trainer Monday morning … He said, ‘Hey, your Sunday test tested positive,'” McDonald said. “It’s just like, what can you really do? In hindsight, I’m sure the team wished that I would’ve tested positive. We did everything right. It’s not like we overlooked anything or skipped any step.”
McDonald went on the NFL’s reserve/COVID-19 list Nov. 9 and came off Nov. 23. As a result of his positive test, the Steelers had to put other players, including Roethlisberger and inside linebacker
FIFA has unveiled the finalists for its marquee honors ahead of this month’s The Best Football Awards show, with a collection of the game’s top players in direct competition for silverware.
After this year’s Ballon d’Or was scrapped due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, FIFA’s annual honors represent the only opportunity for the top men’s and women’s footballers to collect personal hardware in 2020.
The award winners will be announced on Dec. 17.
Here are the finalists for the main individual accolades:
Best Men’s Player
- Cristiano Ronaldo (Juventus and Portugal)
- Lionel Messi (Barcelona and Argentina)
- Robert Lewandowski (Bayern Munich and Poland)
Best Women’s Player
- Lucy Bronze (Manchester City and England)
- Pernille Harder (Chelsea and Denmark)
- Wendie Renard (Lyon and France)
Best Men’s Coach
- Marcelo Bielsa (Leeds United)
- Hans-Dieter Flick (Bayern Munich)
- Jurgen Klopp (Liverpool)
Best Women’s Coach
- Emma Hayes (Chelsea)
- Jean-Luc Vasseur (Lyon)
- Sarina Wiegman (Netherlands)
Best Men’s Goalkeeper
- Alisson Becker (Liverpool and Brazil)
- Manuel Neuer (Bayern Munich and Germany)
- Jan Oblak (Atletico Madrid and Slovenia)
Best Women’s Goalkeeper
- Sarah Bouhaddi (Lyon and France)
- Christiane Endler (Paris Saint-Germain and Chile)
- Alyssa Naeher (Chicago Red Stars and United States)
Puskas Award (best goal)
- Giorgian De Arrascaeta: Flamengo vs. Ceara (Aug. 25, 2019)
- Heung-Min Son: Tottenham vs. Burnley (Dec. 7, 2019)
- Luis Suarez: Barcelona vs. Mallorca (Dec. 7, 2019)
Other honors set to be doled out include FIFA’s Fair Play and Fan awards, while both the men’s and women’s FIFPro World XIs will also be unveiled during a virtual ceremony in Zurich, Switzerland.