bogota.

And suddenly employees of the health department were standing on the sidelines.

Gesticulating wildly, ANVISA officials demanded that the World Cup qualifier between Brazil and Argentina in Sao Paulo be interrupted.

Your allegation: Four Argentine national players violated the quarantine regulations.

Specifically, it was the professionals from the English Premier League Emiliano Buendia, Emiliano Martinez (both Aston Villa) and Cristian Romero and Giovani Lo Celso (both Tottenham).

According to Brazilian entry regulations, they would have had to go into a 14-day quarantine because they had entered from a virus variant area.

In fact, the situation is probably a bit more complicated, because there are several people responsible for abandoning the game.

First of all, there is the South American football association Conmebol, which allows the national players to travel across at least two continents and then also through different countries in the midst of a pandemic.

Scandal is not a surprise

Then it is a debacle for the Argentine Football Association, which is obviously speculating on the fact that the Brazilians, who themselves had to do without more than half a dozen national players because the Premier League refused to allow them to travel to the three World Cup qualifiers, would do so would just accept that the Argentines could compete with a full team.

And of course, hosts Brazil are also involved in the scandal, because it would have been possible for the health authorities to intercept and isolate the players in question before kick-off. But this spectacle should be quite obvious. ANVISA's Antonio Barra Torres told Brazilian media that the Argentine delegation had not followed the agency's instructions from the start. In official Brazilian language, this means: There has been “a notorious violation of the Interministerial Regulation No. 655/2021 and the Brazilian immigration control rules”.

Lionel Messi was surprised and allegedly knew nothing.

“Did you wait for the game to start?

Why didn't you warn us beforehand or at the hotel?

You could have explained it and it would have been settled, ”said Messi after the game was abandoned.

He is said to have threatened that either everyone would play or none.

This would have disregarded the order of the health authority, but it is not the first time that Messi has interpreted regulations according to his own reading.

It is no surprise that Brazil and Argentina are causing this scandal, given that the governments are setting a bad example.

Argentina's president stood out for having organized a private party in the middle of the lockdown, and his Brazilian counterpart Jair Bolsonaro mocked masks or distance anyway.

Now it is discussed how to deal with the abandoned game.

A repetition or continuation is hardly conceivable in view of the overcrowded calendar.

Instead, Brazil could get three points without a fight, should it be confirmed that the opponent had disregarded the entry regulations.

That would be a little embarrassment for the Argentine association.

He rejects all allegations.

Association president Claudio Tapia told the Argentine media: “The health authorities have approved a protocol that we have complied with in full.” National coach Lionel Scaloni was also disappointed: “We wanted to play, the Brazilian players too.

It should have been a festival for everyone to enjoy the best players in the world. "