Nahuel Lanzillotta
09/14/2020 - 18:17
Clarín.com
sports
Lionel Scaloni will be arriving at noon on Tuesday back to Argentina after having left for Mallorca, where he lives with his family, at the beginning of the pandemic.
And when you get off the plane to go to the Ezeiza property to carry out the strict two-week quarantine, you will surely have fresh news of what has been resolved in the Conmebol Board of Directors about the start of the South American Qualifiers.
Everything indicates that they
will be postponed again
, this time for November, although it is not ruled out that they will be directly postponed until next year.
This Monday's meeting, which was held virtually and in which Claudio Tapia, president of the AFA, along with his South American peers, took part in an intermission room.
There was no definition, but everything was directed so that the dates scheduled for October 8 and 13 (the National Team must receive Ecuador as a local and then visit Bolivia) are not played due to the health situation that several countries in the region are going through. region for the coronavirus.
There was an intense debate and each leader put their position on the table.
Everything will depend on FIFA, since the World Cup is under their organization and the Qualifiers are the preliminary phase of this competition.
From Switzerland they already kicked for 2021 the Asia and Concacaf competitions and they would have thought to do the same with the Conmebol.
#Institucional President Claudio Tapia participates at this moment in the meeting of the Board of Directors of @CONMEBOL.
pic.twitter.com/c518B11L9f
- AFA (@afa) September 14, 2020
The underlying problem, in addition to the fact that the focus of the disease today rests on South America, is installed in
the transfer of players
from Europe.
FIFA warned that it
does not oblige clubs
to let their players go, taking into account that there are many countries whose governments require mandatory isolation of several days when entering their territory.
Argentina is one of them (14 days of confinement).
The drawback is doubly because there are European countries, such as Germany and England to cite two examples, in which the provision of preventive quarantine also governs, in addition to PCR tests.
If a club lets a footballer go to his national team, when he returns he will have to lock himself up and miss one or two games with his team.
No one will want to give that advantage.
In addition, possible outbreaks of the virus that force countries to re-apply more restrictive measures should be considered, and if this happens while the players are in America it would be a problem.
In fact, a new postponement of the Qualifiers
could save
Lionel Messi
a headache
(qualified to play both games) since if Barcelona refused to let him go, it would be a new source of tension in the middle of the already strained relationship with the leadership of Josep María Bartomeu.
Lionel Scaloni arrives in Argentina this Tuesday.
Photo: AFP
Beyond FIFA's intention to throw everything away towards next year, Conmebol will do everything possible to play
at least four dates
in the November window
before December
, something that is unlikely today.
As a first measure, the beginning of November would be run to see how the global scenario evolves from here to a month and a half.
There are different positions.
Chiqui
Tapia stated that playing under these circumstances would be a great disadvantage for those selected who have numerous summons from Europe.
Such is the case of
Argentina
.
Colombia and Uruguay were aligned with this idea.
Brazil, Paraguay, Ecuador, and Bolivia were more inclined towards wanting to start now, while the rest were in between.
The other issue is the tightening schedule.
If everything is finally postponed to next year, modifying the format is not ruled out.
One option could be to have three games played in each window, covering a period of one week.
Or
change the classification system directly
, something that will require a great debate to reach a consensus.
For now, everything seems to indicate that in October there will be no national team football in this corner of the world and that Scaloni, who should deliver the list of those mentioned this Sunday, will continue to wait to meet with Messi and his boys.
FK