In truly bizarre scenes, Argentina’s World Cup qualifier with Brazil was interrupted by local authorities trying to deport four players for failing to keep to COVID quarantine protocols.
There are also some Serie A players involved in the match, including Inter striker Lautaro Martinez and Juventus left-back Alex Sandro.
The chaos started this evening just hours before kick-off, when Brazilian authorities announced they would be deporting four Argentina players who had ‘lied’ in order to enter the country.
They are Cristian Romero, Giovani Lo Celso, Emiliano Martinez and Emiliano Buendia, representing Tottenham Hotspur and Aston Villa.
Due to the Delta variant in the United Kingdom, anyone who has come from there needs to quarantine for 14 days in Brazil.
The Argentina squad refused to stand by the orders, starting the Premier League players anyway, including ex-Atalanta defender Cristian Romero.
The match kicked off, but after just five minutes it was interrupted by the Brazilian health authorities, with orders to deport the players.
Just after kick-off, Brazilian health authorities have entered the pitch and brought a stop to the game between Brazil and Argentina 🚨
Reports before the game suggested local authorities had ordered Argentina’s UK based players to be deported due to a failure to quarantine 😮 pic.twitter.com/aSuXZyzVPA
— Premier Sports (@PremierSportsTV) September 5, 2021
The moment when Brazilian health officials entered the pitch of the Arena Neo Química in São Paulo to interrupt the Brazil-Argentina World Cup qualifier due to four Premier-League based Argentine players lying on their entry into the country 3 days ago. pic.twitter.com/2G1Dmd36tG
— Roberto Rojas (@RobertoRojas97) September 5, 2021
So the Argentina players should be deported immediately, because of their flagrant and reckless flouting of the vital Covid 19 quarantine regulations. It just comes across that these players and the Argentine football authorities could not care less about the risk of spreading the Covid 19 virus. They should all be deeply ashamed of themselves.
@Ian David Holland LOL, you are talking about Brazil, so let’s stop pretending that the Brazilian authority cares about the spread of Covid, its president doesn’t care and that’s why Brazil has the worst Covid stats in South America. Save your outrage for somewhere else. This is just Brazilian football tried to cheat.
@islas malvinas, lol @ you, change your username to Falkland. Now.
The Brazilian authorities have shown very little concern previously about the spread of Covid in the country – hence the high rate of cases and fatalities.
This is some kind of showmanship. They players could have been ‘deported’ from the team hotel, or the changing room even.