The institutions of the world of football, in particular LaLiga and the Spanish Football Federation, have developed in recent weeks a complex casuistry of tests and training modes that should be applied when deciding to resume football competitions, frozen, like the rest of the country's activities, due to the covid-19 pandemic. The volunteer protocols used range from the presumption that there will be no public football matches until at least 2021, to the staggering of a six-week preseason with limited training in the number of people, serological tests on the footballers, who apparently already they would be hired, express acceptance of the footballers that there is no zero risk of contagion in the matches and the suggestion that the second round of the League conclude on July 31.
The accumulation of tentative suggestions and schedules can only be interpreted as an attempt to pressure political authorities to authorize the return of football to stadiums. The objective would be to end the competitions, minimize the losses of the clubs, some of which have had to resort to an agreed salary reduction to sustain their balance sheets. It is true that some European leagues already consider a return to training (the case of Germany); But it is also true that there is a heated debate, in Spain or in Europe, about the opportunity to return to competitions.
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The pressure for football to return encounters two major obstacles. The first, which must be understood as a superior condition, is that it must be the Government that decides when and how the parties resume, based on strictly sanitary reasons; other types of reasons cannot be addressed. If entire sectors of the economy are totally paralyzed by the pandemic, there is no reason for football to rush into a return to normality, which could be a setback.
The second reason is that a part of the footballers do not agree with a hasty return from competitions. Regardless of how effective your opposition is, your arguments are respectable. It is not acceptable to accelerate the return as long as there is no clear evidence that the pandemic is controlled or minimized. It is not enough that footballers are a privileged group that has access to specific tests outside the reach of the rest of the citizens. Not a few epidemiologists and even doctors from the clubs themselves consider that it is very risky to resume football matches without the disease being socially controlled.
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