The announcement that Brazil will host the Copa América 2021, replacing Argentina, unleashed a wave of criticism in the second country in the world with the most deaths from coronavirus, which fears a third wave of the pandemic in June.
Conmebol withdrew its headquarters to Argentina because covid-19 flared up, and ten days before it did the same with Colombia as a result of the social outbreak. The tournament in its 2019 edition in Brazil generated revenues of 118 million dollars.
“An event of this magnitude mobilizes innumerable people even though the matches are without an audience. And mobility increases the transmission of the virus. That will have a very significant component in this issue of the recrudescence of the pandemic,” said infectologist José David Urbáez , of the Technical Chamber of Infectology of the Federal District of Brasilia.
A criticism of the change of location points out that there are many countries, such as Chile, that are with much more advanced vaccination and with the pandemic more controlled.
Senator Renan Calheiros, rapporteur of the commission that is investigating possible “omissions” on the part of the president, Jair Bolsonaro, in the pandemic, denounced what he called the “championship of death.”
“Government, Conmebol and CBF. Vaccine offers were filled with mold in the drawers, but the ok to the tournament was agile. Escarnio,” he wrote on Twitter.
The vice president of the commission, Senator Randolfe Rodrígues, asked that the president of the Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF), Rogério Caboclo, be summoned to know “what measures were planned to guarantee health security for Brazilians” during the tournament.
The Brazilian vice president, Hamilton Mourao, defended that organizing the America’s Cup in Brazil presents “less risks” than in Argentina due to the immensity of the territory and the high number of stadiums, which will allow the games to be “distributed”.
“There will be no audience, right? There is no audience, no problem. It is enough to distribute well the places where the matches will take place ”.
Mexico does not close the door to Copa América
Mexico had their last participation as a guest in the South American tournament in the 2016 Centennial edition, when they were eliminated by Chile 7-0. In 2019 and 2021, Mexico was ruled out of participating and remains waiting to be invited in the 2024 edition, as Yon de Luis, president of the Mexican Soccer Federation, has pointed out.
This type of encounter favors growth in the level of play for the Tricolor, which could progressively place it within the top 10 of national teams. However, a junction of dates in the 2011 and 2015 editions with the Gold Cup and the preference that Mexico gave to this last contest and later the creation of the Nations League, in 2018, generated differences between confederations and later led to the combined Mexican to lose the invitation.
On the other hand, more than a year after its original schedule, the Mexican National Team will face Costa Rica on Thursday, June 3 for its commitment in the Nations League Final Four and Honduras on June 11, a competition that the coach Gerardo Martino qualifies as an excess of playing against the same rivals:
“It’s going back to playing with the usual rivals, the ones we face in the Gold Cup and Playoffs, as appropriate. The Nations League is an excess of facing the usual rivals, they are dates that are lost to play with rivals from other continents.”
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