“Never before has football seemed so depressingly and slavishly beholden to the bottom line,” Barry Glendenning wrote for The Guardian, comparing the situation to the film Jaws, in which the mayor refuses to close the beaches even though he is aware of the impending danger. Čeferin’s foolish move from the spring wave of epidemic proved fatal.
While the virus is ravaging Europe and the number of infections is rising like never before, there is no indication that the Champions League – a championship that generates £ 4 billion a year for the European Football Association – has been postponed or cancelled. Following the example of France, Germany, Belgium and Greece, England recently announced the restrictions on public life, with stricter measures also announced in Spain and Italy. In twenty-one clubs, out of thirty-two, these seven countries are represented by a high number of players in both the Champions League and the Europa League. In the clubs of both leagues, players from forty countries are currently at a standstill due to an epidemic that has yet to see an end.
The implementation of the football championship requires travel of thirty or forty members of each club’s team, who leave their relatively safe home bubble just to achieve financial goals. “Never before has football seemed so depressingly and slavishly beholden to the bottom line,” Barry Glendenning wrote for the Guardian, comparing the situation to the film Jaws, in which the mayor refuses to close the beaches even though he is aware of the impending danger.
Čeferin does not care about the pandemic
Aleksander Čeferin, president of the European Football Association (UEFA), and his executive committee, which is trying to make up for the stopped competitive season of the European League and Champions during the first wave of the epidemic, are acting similarly as the major from the film Jaws. Čeferin allowed a match with full audience on March 11. Moreover, one of the football matches was the source of a virus outbreak that may have led to Bergamo becoming the epicentre of the coronavirus in Italy.
Last week, the Lazio football club was forced to travel to Brussels due to the virus in a reduced composition as the players had to be quarantined before the match against Turin. The Italian club will now have to travel to St. Petersburg, where more than 18,000 positive tests were reported on Saturday. Doing so seems, to put it mildly, reckless and irresponsible. So far, fortunately, none of the football stars have died from COVID-19, and we hope they will not, but the virus has taken a toll among football players. Some teams were at high risk of infection due to traveling and teaming up with their international teammates. “In centuries to come (if we make it that far),” Glendenning writes, “students of history will have no shortage of detailed case studies to pore over as they struggle to come to terms with the mind-boggling ineptitude with which this pandemic has been handled by figures in authority who should have known better.”