Remember horse placenta woman? She dominated the football news cycle for a few days in 2009 when Robin Van Persie and other noteworthy names of the era made their way to Belgrade to seek urgent treatment from this enigmatic Serbian healer, Marijana Kovacevic.

Her therapy was distinctive: a horse placenta rubbed on the afflicted area, usually a muscle tear, and there were many Serbian players prepared to swear by her methods. There were others who were not so sure. One sceptic who witnessed a session was surprised that Kovacevic smoked a Marlboro Red throughout. She disappeared from favour almost as swiftly as she had surfaced but for a brief time Kovacevic was flavour of the month – and what a strange flavour it was.

Which is to illustrate the point that an injured footballer frustrated with a slow recovery, and some big games looming can make strange decisions. By and large, however, they place their futures in the hands of the high-spec sophisticated medical departments at their disposal. Hard to state just how rapid the medical advance has been in football in recent years, from the treatment and diagnosis, to the identification of external specialists to the meticulous rehabilitation from serious injury. A footballer of the modern era has all the tools at his disposal to maintain and improve his physicality in what remains a rough, unforgiving trade.

At all levels of the game, the players talk a great deal about different approaches at clubs. How one team-mate has been conditioned a certain way. How a certain doctor regards surgery compared to another. The best-paid players often fund external expert physiotherapy. Like a super-remunerated cohort of gym locker-room bores, top players are obsessed with their bodies. Understandable given the huge demands of the fixture list and the equally huge rewards on offer. They place their livelihoods in the hands of the doctors and physiotherapists.

Which makes it so hard to understand why football’s Covid vaccination uptake remains so far short of capacity. It was 68 per cent at the last Premier League count. The Football League announced this week that as many as 25 per cent of its players will not take the vaccine. That number, and the belligerence implied, is an embarrassment to the English game.

By contrast, Serie A announced vaccination rates of 98 per cent with Spain (93 per cent), France (95 per cent) and Germany (94 per cent) not far behind. In the Premier League and Football League the consensus is that Dr Facebook and all his myriad conspiracy theories still has a following. Or as Jurgen Klopp said, “it is unbelievable how aggressive the anti-vax scene is”.

The clubs cling to the consolation that the rate of vaccination among Premier League and Football League players is broadly consistent with UK-wide levels for the male population aged between 18 and 35. Although it should be said that the general population have had nothing like the attention and patience lavished on them in vaccine education that professional footballers have benefited from.

The deputy medical officer Jonathan Van-Tam has personally attended calls for Premier League captains, and experts have visited clubs to discuss the advantages of vaccination. As for the conspiracy that it might just be their employers who advocate the jab, the players’ union, the Professional Footballers’ Association, has recommended its members take government advice and get the vaccine.

Then there is the advice of clubs’ well-resourced medical departments trusted with the critical calls on surgery or treatment which some players are willing to ignore on the vaccine issue. Thus far the game has mostly crept around them, hoping that gentle persuasion may change their mind. Only Klopp thus far has put it bluntly: that vaccination is a moral responsibility.

The “lies and misinformation” of the anti-vaxxers Klopp warns of have consequences for a game which cannot simply carry on indulging the unvaccinated forever. “If a player is not vaccinated at all,” Klopp says, “he is a constant threat for all of us.” It also seems that where others have been fearful to tread, the logic of the market will intervene. Football does have a habit of cutting to the truth eventually.

Klopp has been explicit: no unvaccinated players will be signed by Liverpool. Mikel Arteta, Steven Gerrard and Eddie Howe have all suggested they feel the same way in respect of their recruitment policies. Each unvaccinated player who is currently in contact with an infected person is obliged to isolate for ten days, another contributory factor to squad absences. The recirculation and mutation of the virus, especially through the unvaccinated, continues. Football is just one more sport where one cannot socially distance from an opponent.

Throughout their careers, footballers are forgiven a great deal. Their talent confers on them a unique status that makes them scarce and valuable in a way that is unusual. They work hard for it, of course, and each career is short, but in some it can also create a certain mindset that generates some odd beliefs.

As the Covid-19 crisis continues, the vaccine-refusers assume a right that denies others theirs. In football, the career-ending tackle, and the career-ending misdiagnosis is largely a thing of the past. The game is safer in so many ways. No player would ever overrule his specialist medical department on his treatment. The same specialists who want players to get vaccinated are those who decide treatment on anything from a headache to a ruptured ligament; who tend to them on the pitch in emergencies.

One suspects that if Klopp was to call any of those Football League vaccine refusers to tell them their talent had been underestimated, that they were wasted in League Two and they deserved a bigger club at a better level, not one of them would wait for him to say it twice. Naturally they consider him an expert in his field and would respond accordingly. That is all is he asking of them when it comes to the experts in public health.