The round of 16 match between Liverpool and Atlético Madrid that ended with victory and consequent classification for the Spanish team in the Champions League it remains a focus of controversy. In this case, not in terms of sports, but what happened in the stands and around Anfield.
To understand this, you have to place yourself on that March 11, the day the coronavirus was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO), those infected worldwide were already more than 100,000 (7 times less than today) and the fatalities were close to 3,100. Soccer had not yet been suspended in Europe, but some specific meetings had been held without an audience.
One of the games that was played open-ended with both biases was precisely Liverpool-Atlético Madrid for the return of the round of 16 of the continental competition, despite the fact that in Spain there were already thousands of cases and in England the virus had not yet spread massively. In other words, the authorities knew of the risk that the transfer of hundreds of Madrid residents to the United Kingdom generated.
Carlo Ancelotti, current technical director of Everton, had a dialogue with the Italian site il Corriere dello Sport that himself Jürgen Klopp, coach of the Reds, assured him that the match should not have been disputed: "He told me that playing under those conditions was a criminal act and I think he was right. "
"Today the priority is health and how to limit infection. Everything else is secondary. I am not worried when the season will start again or when the season will end.
The truth is after that encounter, several cases of coronavirus appeared in Liverpool, when until then there were none. That situation unleashed the anger of the mayor of the city, who last week recalled that at that time the closure of schools in Spain had already been announced and that Atlético had the order to play without an audience in their stadium, but that it was still decided that fans are present at Anfield. "Many questioned the decision at the time, but UEFA and the UK government did not impose any restrictions for the party to develop normally, "he said.
It is worth remembering that another of the keys to the Champions League it also had sanitary consequences. In this case, it was the first leg of the round of 16 between Atalanta and Valencia disputed at the San Siro (Milan) in February that caused conflicts in Italy: “If what they are saying is that the virus was already circulating in Europe in January, it is likely that the 40,000 bergamascos that were present in the stands of San Siro have passed the virus between them. In the same way that it is possible that many people that night have gathered in their houses and bars to watch the game and have done the same, "said the mayor of Bergamo with the foreign press via Facebook last Wednesday. That encounter was described as a "biological bomb" by a specialist in respiratory disorders.
Today, sports activity in the world is practically paralyzed and there are already more than 718 thousand infected (150 thousand recovered) and more than 33 thousand people have died from the coronavirus, the spread of which has wreaked havoc in countries like China, Italy, Iran and Spain.