Liverpool has had WORSE international breaks. Off the top of my head, for example, I recall several occasions when either Daniel Sturridge or Joe Gomez returned from the break so crocked by injury that they wouldn’t put on a red shirt for months.
But, there has never been a STRANGER international break than this one. Stay tuned, however, things might get even weirder in October and November.
LFC and (most) other Premier League clubs declined to release players to play for their national teams if doing so meant they would be visiting “red list” countries. Under UK COVID-19 rules, anyone coming (or returning) to England from a “red list” country must quarantine in a hotel for 10 days. This is less than ideal for a football player, who would not only be unable to play matches, but would also be unable to train.
Thus, Mo Salah, Alisson Becker, and Fabinho all stayed in England during the break. Firmino stayed in Liverpool due to injury, but he would have also been held back because of the COVID-19 issue.
Most other Premier League teams followed the same protocol, with the exception of Spurs and Villa, which both sent Argentinian players home. The UK government accommodated this decision slightly, by agreeing that those players could fly back to a different European country, where they would be allowed to train while in “quarantine,” before returning to England 10 days later.
Meanwhile, FIFA declined to acknowledge the quandary of the European clubs. Before the break, FIFA reiterated its stance that all clubs would be required to release players to their national teams, regardless of any quarantine consequences.
Then, during the break, things got weirder. On Sunday, Brazil hosted a match against Argentina. The Brazilian government requires visitors from the UK (and a few other countries) to quarantine upon entry. However, there is an exception (which makes no public health sense) for Brazilian citizens. So, if, for example, Alisson and Fabinho had gone back to Brazil, the Brazilian government would have allowed them to play without any quarantine requirement. But Argentina players coming from the UK are a different story. After all, those guys are NOT Brazilian citizens.
The Brazilian officials allowed the match to begin. Then, bizarrely, five minutes after the game started, public health officials stormed onto the pitch and stopped the match, on the grounds that the Argentinian players who came from the UK (these are the guys from Spurs and Villa) should have quarantined upon entering the country.
Time moves on, and we move further down the rabbit hole. Later in the week, the Brazilians registered formal complaints with FIFA against all of the Premier League teams that refused to release Brazilians during the break, EXCEPT Everton. In a public statement, the Brazilian football association says that because it has a “good relationship with Everton,” they are not complaining about Everton’s failure to release Richarlison.
FIFA obliged Brazil by sanctioning all of the Premier League clubs — except Everton — that refused to release Brazilians. FIFA says that the Brazilians who were held back (except, of course, for Richarlison) cannot play for their Premier League clubs during the period of September 10-14.
Some of the press are reporting that the (eight) sanctioned Premier League clubs intend to ignore the sanction and play their Brazilian players this weekend anyway.
Meanwhile, this whole scenario is likely to play out all over again in both October and November, during the next two international breaks. Chaos — and not the good kind.
If that had been all that happened over the international break, it would definitely still qualify as the weirdest break ever.
But it wasn’t all that happened.
On Saturday, Naby Keïta and his Guinean mates were busily preparing for their match on Sunday against visiting Morocco, when they learned that the Guinean government had been ousted in a military coup. The Moroccan embassy moved quickly, and managed to hustle the Moroccan team out of the country that same day, despite the fact that the new leaders of the country claimed to have shut down its borders. Meanwhile, the Guinean national team members, including Naby, were stuck. They finally made it out of the country on Tuesday — I would guess after some negotiations with the new leaders. Who knows whether some or all of Guinea’s national football squad will go back to Guinea in October and November, given the uncertainties of the political situation there.
In more mundane news, Taki Minamino returned early from Japan with some type of muscle injury, and Harvey Elliott also came early from England U-21 travels, as a “precautionary” measure based on some injury concern. Elliott is already back in full training with LFC, but Minamino may be out for a few weeks.
