Everything seemed to have gone smoothly. The first Spanish football league ended on Sunday evening the last of their eleven catch-up days. Without corona cases. A triumph over the whiners, scaredy rabbits, pessimists. A confirmation that there is at least one area in crisis-ridden Spain where they can do things as well as anywhere else, if not better.
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And then that.
Monday evening, last matchday of the second division. Both for sixth place, which entitles to participate in the promotion playoff, as well as in the relegation battle, there are duels in several places. All plot lines come together in the game of the relegation candidate Deportivo La Coruña against the aspirant Fuenlabrada. The first reports a few hours before the start of the game: There are Covid cases at Fuenlabrada. Not one, not two. Seven players, plus a few supervisors. A total of twelve infected.
Fuenlabrada occupies the top floor of the Hotel Finisterre in the Galician port city. The regional health authorities isolate the team. When word gets around, other hotel guests leave in a hurry.
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The corona chaos breaks out. What critics feared football would resume. Professionals who are constantly patting themselves – who still remembers the initial recommendations without cheering without physical contact? – are infected among themselves. And then carry the virus across the country.
The crisis team only made things worse
Deportivo coach Fernando Vázquez speaks of a “dystopia” at the hour of the prevented kick-off at the Estadio Riazor. The experienced coach is indignant. Where everything is bad enough, the crisis team of the association, league and state sports supervisory authority CSD has made it worse.
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It is clear that the game between Deportivo and Fuenlabrada has to be postponed. But all other games are kicked off. Even if the last opponents of Fuenlabrada have already been infected and could now infect other teams. Even if the league violates its regulations, according to which all relevant table games must run simultaneously on the last two match days.
As in the preseason the soccer player José Antonio Reyes died in a traffic accident, the association moved out of consideration for Reyes’ club Extremadura and the integrity of the competition the entire penultimate day. Now the opposite has happened: Several clubs report in the course of the evening that they have been forced to play by the sports authorities; otherwise there will be a deduction of points.
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The league said in a brief statement that the decision “would best protect player health and fairness of competition”. One can only speculate about the real motives. Was there any pressure because these days, with the number of cases growing rapidly, harbingers of a second wave of corona sweeping through Spain? Should what is still to be played be played?
Madrid was the Corona hotspot for weeks
Fuenlabrada is a satellite city in the southwest of Madrid. The capital was the Spanish Corona hotspot in the spring. But the regional government amazed with fantastic numbers – on the same Monday there were supposedly only thirteen new Covid cases among the 6.6 million inhabitants – and, while other parts of the country are already in partial lockdown, is the only region other than the Canary Islands Mask requirement ordered.
At Fuenlabrada, one player tested positive on Saturday, and three coaches on Sunday, including the team doctor. The rest flew to La Coruña on Monday morning anyway. Apparently in coordination with the league, a third test was carried out in the morning. The results did not come until the afternoon, when the team had long been in La Coruña. The club insists that it has “followed the sanitary protocol”.
At the also Madrid club Rayo Vallecano, the player Yacine Qasmi confesses shortly before the kick-off of his own game in Santander that he recently met a Fuenlabrada player for dinner. Five minutes before kick-off, coach Paco Jémez takes him off the line-up.
Rayo announces legal steps
Shortly after the kick-off, Rayo is the first of several clubs to announce legal action against the, quote, “rampage” of the authorities to whip the rest of the matchday. From a sporting point of view, the club, which is still competing for the playoff place, designs a scenario according to which the rivals of Deportivo La Coruña would win their games in the relegation battle and Deportivo could already be mathematically relegated if it meets Fuenlabrada for the catch-up game.
This is exactly the scenario. Only Deportivos announces President Fernando Vidal in the evening. “We don’t see ourselves as relegated.” You will go through all instances. “It’s a big botch, the matchday must be repeated completely.” On Tuesday, Deportivo proposed to increase the league to 24 teams in order to find a reasonably peaceful solution – and to ensure their own relegation.
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It is completely open whether this proposal has any chance of success and how it should proceed anyway. As such, the promotion playoff should begin on Thursday, for which not all participants are now certain. Fuenlabrada could play his game in La Coruña in ten days at the earliest. This is how long the players in your hotel have been quarantined by the local authorities.
During his promotional tour to restart football, league chief Javier Tebas boasted in May: “It is impossible for us to have even one team with five positive cases at once.” This could only happen in the event of “negligence” or “disregard of the regulations”. Yes, Tebas even seemed to place Dynamo Dresden in the German 2nd division, his two positive cases at the time to have deliberately brought about: “You are last in the second division …”.
Now he himself has the problem that supposedly there never could have been.
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