Aston Villa and Newcastle would play today (4) for the English Premier League, but the match had to be postponed because of an outbreak of coronavirus in the visiting team. Four players tested positive last weekend, and the team has been in isolation ever since. The postponement is a novelty of the Football Association (the local federation), which had promised in September only to accept rescheduling matches in which the infected team had less than 14 athletes at its disposal.
This is not the first coronavirus outbreak this season in England. And the different measures taken in each case denounce the sporting loss of maintaining professional football in the midst of the pandemic - just like in Brazil. In the English League Cup, in which the elite billionaires' clubs mix with the reality of the lower divisions, Tottenham won a game by WO because opponent Leyton Orient had an outbreak of contamination; West Ham was allowed to enter the field even after two of their athletes tested positive.
Such cases have happened not only in England, but in all the countries of the major European leagues, which has a lack of teams and influences, directly or indirectly, the leaderboards of the round. In this sense, the asterisk of this edition of the Spanish or Italian Championship is identical to that of the Brasileirão, in which Palmeiras had 18 absences due to coronavirus in one round, Flamengo had 16 in another, and so on.
Even the Champions League is not free from the sporting losses of the pandemic. This month Dynamo of Kiev, for example, faced Barcelona without being able to count on nine infected; while Ajax traveled to face Midtjylland with only 17 players, because 11 athletes in the squad had coronavirus. Also in August, a team from Kosovo (Drita) lost a preliminary round game due to WO because two athletes were diagnosed, which forced the isolation of the entire squad to meet the protocol of Switzerland, where the match would take place.
Post a Comment
What do you think?