A player with Spain’s Real Madrid soccer team may face arrest after breaking the country’s coronavirus quarantine.
Real Madrid striker Luka Jovic broke quarantine last week to go see his model girlfriend despite being told to observe a two-week isolation period when a local basketball player turned up positive for the coronavirus, TMZ reported.
Like neighboring Italy, Spain has also seen a large number of cases of the virus, with 40,000 cases of which 2,800 people have died.
Despite the quarantine suggestion, Jovic reportedly flew to Serbia last Thursday to see his pregnant girlfriend, model Sofija Milosevic.
But now, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has announced that authorities are investigating the player for breaking Serbia’s quarantine rules.
Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabic slammed the player for his actions. “We have negative examples of football stars who earn millions abroad, and when they come back to Serbia, they don’t self-isolate as is obligatory,” Brnabic said.
The player insisted that he was unaware of the country’s quarantine policies.
“While in Spain, I tested negative for coronavirus, and I decided to travel to Serbia to help and support our people and be close to my family, in agreement with my club,” Jovic told his fans.
The player added:
When I landed in Serbia, I again tested negative for coronavirus. I am very sorry that some people did their job unprofessionally and did not give me the correct instructions on how to behave in self-isolation.
In Spain, I was allowed to go to a pharmacy and a supermarket so I could get the groceries I needed, which is not the case here. I apologize to everyone if I have endangered them in some way, and I hope that together we can manage to overcome all this.
Even the player’s father turned against him — at least if his son actually broke some kind of law– saying, “If he has to go to prison, let him go. I agree completely with the president and the prime minister, but only if he’s guilty of wrongdoing.”
Still, the elder Jovic had some doubts if any real law was broken.
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