Opinion – Sandro Macedo: Letting Djocovid play would be a clear defeat for the sport

Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic are tied for the ATP grand slam record, 20 each. From January 17th, the Australian Open begins, a chance for someone to isolate themselves in the lead.

Discussion of who was the best of the three aside (it was Federer), who IS better is Novak Djokovic. shot. Had a brilliant 2021, knocked out even Nadal at Roland Garros. And he was the favorite to reach the 21st slam first.

But the Serbian tennis player is anti-vaccine. He has already earned the simple nickname on Djocovid’s networks. And yet, apparently, the tournament’s organization would let him play without taking the immunizer — a deference to the number 1, and a clear defeat for the sport.

However, the Australian government, in a coherent decision, banned the tennis player from entering the country. That is, Djocovid may fail to conquer the dreamed record for taking a match point of his own stupidity — Nadal, vaccinated, curiously recovers from a Covid infection, and the forty-year-old Federer continues to struggle with injuries.

If Djocovid manages to legally reverse the situation and play in the tournament, he will have my supporters against him in every game.

Unfortunately, however, Djocovid’s case is not an isolated one. There are many sportsmen with a lot of money and few neurons who refuse to take the vaccine. In American sports, the number of infected increases every week. In the NFL, there are already those who say that the Super Bowl champion, in February, will be the team that best manages the number of infected in the squad.

The point is that nobody wants a game without fans anymore. Screw the increase in the number of cases. The great example of the NBA bubble in 2020 is behind us. Now, the basketball league is loosening rules, and unvaccinated people are being allowed to take to the court, like Kyrie Irving of the Brooklyn Nets.

Whether in the NFL or the NBA, it seems that the concern with large crowds is in the past. Perhaps the news of the low lethality of the omicron variant is enough for no one to pay attention to one of the main ingredients of “showtime”: the fan. They did not observe that “low lethality” means “lethality”.

In football, the story is not much different, even in more civilized places – in the country where Flamengo and Vasco wanted the immediate return of the fans even with thousands of infections a day, it’s not even worth talking about.

The first indication that something was rotten in the reign of UEFA came already in the distant Eurocup. Insisting on running the competition in more than ten cities — as opposed to containing it in one or two — never seemed like a smart idea. Delegations traveled to and fro, through countries that had different rules in the containment of Covid. If in Scotland the stadium was partially filled, in Hungary it was full of people.

England even hinted that the final could have a reduced audience. Faced with the news, UEFA threatened to pull the final out of the country if they didn’t fill Wembley to 100% capacity. And they filled up.

At the turn of the year, with the omicron terrorizing the European continent, several English teams faced outbreaks of Covid and about 20 Premier League matches had to be rescheduled – in fact, curious as always when a European team has cases of Covid, there is a Brazilian involved. ; maybe we are more sensitive to the virus. But what about the crowd? Filling the stadium, week after week. The other day I saw a player celebrating the goal hugging the fans and I was terrified by the possibility of contamination.

In Germany – the Germans are smarter – matches were once again played behind closed doors, including Champions League matches, such as Bayern vs Barcelona. If it were possible, I would like a German team to win the Champions League… and the German, the English, the NBA and the Brazilian.

Adding the modalities, the sport is taking a beating from the pandemic, with goals from different variants. It’s a 7-1 every day — but here the losing goal is German.