On the economist article, the study didn’t find a significant drop, it found a reduction in minutes played of 2 minutes per game and a reduction in passes of 3 per 90 minutes 225 days post-covid. Although zero effect is outside of the confidence interval for the passes metric (but not minutes played) according to the study, the effect is so small, and the measure so noisy, that in my view it is almost certainly a statistical artefact.
And here’s an Economist article analysing footballer performance after COVID infection: https://archive.ph/qGWKs
Average performance measures definitely dropped significantly long-term. But it doesn’t have data on all-out disability.
And this article lists a few names, but also mentions what you write: that surprisingly few athletes had Long Covid at the time of writing: https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2021/04/19/athletes-long-haul-covid-justin-foster/
On the economist article, the study didn’t find a significant drop, it found a reduction in minutes played of 2 minutes per game and a reduction in passes of 3 per 90 minutes 225 days post-covid. Although zero effect is outside of the confidence interval for the passes metric (but not minutes played) according to the study, the effect is so small, and the measure so noisy, that in my view it is almost certainly a statistical artefact.
Fair enough re: significance and effect size. I don’t think it’s an artefact though