Opinion: give CONMEBOL 5 more places and take them away from UEFA

The fight between FIFA and CONMEBOL against several of the main European leagues is to rent a balcony. Publicly the Premier League (England), Serie A (Italy), the Primera Liga (Portugal) and La Liga (Spain) announced that they will not loan any player from their teams to participate in CONMEBOL's FIFA triple date for the qualifiers to the World Cup in Qatar.

Leagues (and clubs) assure that because South America has a high risk of contagion of COVID-19, their players would have to return and quarantine for 10 days. Adding trips, FIFA date, quarantine, and physical recovery, it would give more than 20 days without being able to count on its players. It is understandable that they are worried about losing key pieces in their teams, but the solution is not far from refusing to lend to their players.

We go by parts, the Premier criticizes that there are 3 dates (3 games) of national teams. Well, it would be good to remind you that these triple dates should have been organized because in March, the same league went to FIFA not to loan players. So, those two games were moved and left two future dates with 3 games each (like the one that is going to be played). So this disorder started by itself.

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However, the underlying problem is not even soccer. The underlying problem is the shortage of vaccines that several countries in the region still face, their weakened economy and high rates of infection compared to Europe (not to mention that Chile has better numbers than the United Kingdom). Many of these problems are precisely due to the hoarding of doses in the United States and… yes, Europe. Then the British government sees the rest of the world as possible sources of infection and they decide, from their full stadiums, to veto anyone who leaves the country, regardless of whether they will travel to focus on coronavirus-free bubbles. They will not be able to ensure that they are not infected, but they cannot do that in their countries either.

But to lend their players for the Olympics in Tokyo, did they see a problem? There they were not concerned that their players were absent from their national teams (many of these European ones). But when it is the national teams of South America that need their luxury teams to qualify for, no more, no less, the World Cup in Qatar, then they look at us with contempt and colonialist thinking. They will be able to pay their salaries, but all the national teams in the world have the right to summon their players and they have the right to represent their countries.

Experts in legal law defend the position of the European leagues. According to the update of the call for players due to the pandemic, it determines that: "The provisions relating to the release of players to the national teams mentioned in Annex 1 will normally apply except if i. A) there is a mandatory quarantine period of self-isolation for at least 5 days on arrival at:
a) The territory where the club is bound to release the player to the national team, or b) The territory in which the national team match is to be held ".

But in South America we cannot distribute the quotas to the World Cup by lottery. We cannot begin to play rock, paper or scissors or throw a monkey in the air and determine if Bolivia or Brazil go to the World Cup. So, for them to be calm, that they grant the necessary quotas to CONMEBOL (which may come from UEFA) and thus we would not need to play the qualifiers here and the employers of the players, keep in mind that they should only hire players who do not go to play with their national teams.

In this way, they will be able to continue hoarding the doses (now with the third injections) and their clubs (who also knew about the calendar from before) will not have the obligation to loan foreign players. Even, in the future, they will only be able to use local players and we will see how the level of the league's decreases without Neymar, Messi, Maradona, Di Steffano, Luís Suárez, Cavani, James Rodríguez, Falcao, Vidal, Batistuta, Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, etc.