Brazil head coach Tite has admitted that ‘the health of people’ should be the priority and that combined with FIFA’s leniency towards Everton and the Argentina debacle should help them overturn the ban.
Alisson Becker, Fabinho and Roberto Firmino have all been banned by FIFA from representing Liverpool this weekend for failure to report for international duty and will be forced to miss the Premier League fixture against Leeds United.
It’s a farce as Everton forward Richarlison has been spared while Fred will miss two games for Manchester United, Chelsea’s Thiago Silva will miss two games while Ederson will miss this weekend’s game against Leicester City.
However, Brazil’s own manager, Tite, has admitted that the ‘health of people’ is his priority and this should be used by all affected Premier League clubs in their appeal to FIFA to have the decision overturned.
“A fair decision is to respect laws, a fair decision is first and foremost the health of people,” Tite said, via GE.
“The fair decision is that the sport is important, but it has a scale of importance in which health is above, the laws are above.”
This statement from the Brazil manager puts the Argentina game under even more of a spotlight after the game was suspended due to concerns over covid protocol being violated.
A decision taken by match officials and a decision that further vindicates the one taken by Premier League clubs to refuse their players from travelling to Brazil – a country on the United Kingdom’s red list for travellers.
Liverpool, according to the Echo, “are determined their players can and should be allowed to play this weekend given the players would’ve been unable to report back from international duty as normal.”
It’s easy to understand why the Brazilian FA are upset as they wanted their best players available to them for important World Cup qualifiers but their position to ask FIFA to ban Premier League clubs has lost its footing by not also banning Everton and Richarlison.
It shows bias and undermines their argument.