The National Health Surveillance Agency (Anvisa, regulator) of Brazil interrupted the match between Brazil and Argentina this Sunday due to an alleged irregularity in the arrival of 4 visiting players in the country, in a controversial decision that led to the withdrawal of the teams and the referees .
The incident occurred when 5 minutes of play were passing at the Neo Química Arena stadium in Sao Paulo, in a match on the sixth day of the South American qualifiers for the Qatar 2022 World Cup, when Brazilian health prosecutors stormed the stadium lawn.
The reaction of the visiting team was to lock themselves in their locker room, while the delegates of the South American Football Confederation (Conmebol) withdrew the entire refereeing body to seek a solution to the situation.
Speaking to the broadcast of the Globo channel, the president of Anvisa, Antonio Barra Torres, explained that the Argentine delegation had been notified that the 4 players should remain isolated in the hotel and that when Federal Police agents went to check them he had left for the stadium.
«It was the sequence of non-compliance with guidelines and determinations. When the prosecutors and the police officers went to verify the hotel, they were informed that the players had left and the rest of the story you already know, “said Barra Torres, also a rear admiral of the Navy.
In the television images, after the visiting team locked themselves in the locker room, captain Lionel Messi was seen returning to the pitch and addressing Neymar, his Brazilian counterpart and partner in the French Paris Saint Germain, and Dani Alves, with whom he played in the Barcelona of Spain.
According to Globo, Messi told Neymar, Dani Alves, local coach Tite and defender Marquinhos, his partner in Paris Saint Germain and that he was not related because he was sent off, that Argentina would not return to the field if the 4 players did not could play.
A few hours before the game, Anvisa asked the Brazilian Federal Police for the isolation or immediate deportation of 4 Argentine soccer players who, according to the entity, lied to immigration about the demands during the pandemic.
The body indicated in a statement, without citing names, that it asked the civil authorities for the “mandatory quarantine or immediate return to the country of origin” of the footballers, after detecting “non-compliance with the country’s sanitary rules and, supposedly, declaring in an official form false information ».
The athletes in question are Emiliano Martínez and Emiliano Buendía (Aston Villa) and Cristian Romero and Giovani Lo Celso (Tottenham), who, after performing the previous week with their London clubs, traveled to South America to join the Argentine team.
The 4 players were on Thursday in the victory of Argentina by 1-3 in Caracas over the local Venezuela and from the Venezuelan capital they traveled with the entire Argentine delegation to Sao Paulo, where they will face this Sunday against Brazil for the South American qualifying for the Qatar World Cup 2022.
Current Brazilian health regulations require that people who have been in the United Kingdom, India and South Africa in the last 14 days must comply with a mandatory quarantine.
While waiting for a decision on the match, Brazil leads the tie with 21 points and 100% performance, escorted by the also undefeated Argentina, with 15 points. EFE (HN)