Brazil president wants return of soccer

RIO DE JANEIRO: The right-wing populist president of Brazil wants the football season to resume even though the five-time World Cup winning country is a hotspot of the coronavirus pandemic.

Brazil is for many synonymous with football and many of the all-time greats, from Pele to Neymar, hail from the nation. But Brazil is also the epicentre of Latin America’s coronavirus outbreak. The death toll from coronavirus in Brazil has hit 27,878, official figures showed on Friday, surpassing the toll of hard-hit Spain and making it the country with the fifth-highest number of fatalities. Football has been suspended in Brazil since mid-March but President Jair Bolsonaro recently told Radio Guaiba that footballers would likely not fall very ill with Covid-19. “As footballers are young athletes the risk of death if they catch coronavirus would be dramatically reduced,” Bolsonaro said.

Back in March Bolsonaro also claimed that thanks to his own sporting past he would only suffer a slight cold if he caught the virus.

The president says his chief motivation for wanting football to get back underway is to curb unemployment and the misery that accompanies it. “The players have to survive somehow,” he said, explaining that while some top footballers earn a fortune, those from smaller regional leagues need to play “to feed their families”.

The way Brazilian politics works, it is not in Bolsonaro’s remit to restart football. This must be done by the regional states and municipalities. When football was suspended, seasons at the regional level were underway, but the national championship had been due to start in May and as yet there are no solid plans to begin.