RIO DE JANEIRO, May 31, 2020 (BSS/AFP) – The right-wing populist president
of Brazil wants the football season to resume even though the five-time World
Cup winning country is a hotspot of the coronavirus pandemic.
Brazil is for many synonomous with football and many of the all-time greats,
from Pele to Neymar, hail from the nation.
But Brazil is is also the epicentre of Latin America’s coronavirus outbreak.
The death toll from coronavirus in Brazil has hit 27,878, official figures
showed on Friday, surpassing the toll of hard-hit Spain and making it the
country with the fifth-highest number of fatalities.
Football has been suspended in Brazil since mid-March but President Jair
Bolsonaro recently told Radio Guaiba that footballers would likely not fall
very ill with COVID-19.
“As footballers are young athletes the risk of death if they catch
coronavirus would be dramatically reduced,” Bolsonaro said.
Back in March Bolsonaro also claimed that thanks to his own sporting past he
would only suffer a slight cold if he caught the virus.
The president says his chief motivation for wanting football to get back
underway is to curb unemployment and the misery that accompanies it.
“The players have to survive somehow,” he said, explaining that while some
top footballers earn a fortune, those from smaller regional leagues need to
play “to feed their families”.
The way Brazilian politics works, it is not in Bolsonaro’s remit to restart
football. This must be done by the regional states and municipalities.
When football was suspended, seasons at the regional level were underway,
but the national championship had been due to start in May and as yet there
are no solid plans to begin.
Bolsonaro and his son held meetings on May 19 with the presidents of two Rio
superclubs, Vasco da Gama and Flamengo.
Photos of Bolsonaro and his son wearing the shirts of the two clubs stunned
social media, with official supporter groups claiming their image had been
sold out to politics.
“This is just political intolerance,” said Flamengo president Rodolfo
Landim, explaining that Bolsonaro just wants football back as soon as possible
and he himself “is defending the interests of Flamengo.”
The day afer the meeting Flamengo were filmed by a TV Globo helicopter
breaking the Rio lockdown rules by training without permission.
Rio state health secretary Ana Beatriz Bush said the act of defiance set a
terrible example.
“Imagine all the young people who see Flamengo training, they’ll want to go
out of their homes and that is not possible,” she said.
Rio mayor Marcelo Crivella, however, has authorised training to resume in
June and sees matches taking place behind closed doors sometime in July.
Rio’s two other major clubs, Fluminense and Botafogo, are on record as
saying this seems premature.
One of Brazil’s top sports journalists, Mauro Cezar Pereira, of ESPN Brazil
also feels it is too soon.
“It reflects the fact that some clubs are deeply in debt and dependant on
broadcasting income. The Bundesliga restart intensified the rush. But unlike
in Germany, the infection curve is still climbing in Brazil.”
Players may have little say in the matter, with the president of the
Internacional club saying any player refusing to come back to training should
instead resign.