Swine Flu Hits Copa Libertadores

By: Daryl | May 1st, 2009

The swine flu epidemic/pandemic/panic [delete as appropriate] isn’t just threatening the Confederations Cup, it’s causing trouble for a real tournament too: Copa Libertadores.

Two Mexican teams – Chivas and San Luis – are through to the last 16 of the Libertadores, but CONMEBOL have taken a look at the situation in Mexico right now (where games are being played in empty stadiums to avoid further flu spreading) and said “no thank you.”

The CONMEBOL plan is for San Luis and Chivas to play the home legs of their knockout games in Bogota, Colombia. Only problem is that no one is happy with that solution.

It’s San Luis’ first time in the knockout rounds, and they made it thanks to an injury time second goal in their final group game. They’re also well aware that it was Boca Juniors (potential quarter-final opponents if both teams go through) that raised concerns about San Luis playing at home.

“This decision will affect us and we are quite disappointed about not being able to play in our home after we clinched the qualification in a quite dramatic way,” said San Luis President Perez Amaral.

“It is historic because this is San Luis’ first Copa Libertadores appearance and, even though we believe the CONMEBOL decision has valid reasons, we believe there were other possible options such as changing the home condition like Mexico did with Jamaica when that country had a problem.

“Based on fair play, we wanted to change the home condition to have some time for the country to return to the normal way of living, but we know the main opponents to this option was Boca Juniors so they made the decision that affects us and leaves the city of San Luis Potosi without the chance of hosting a historic match.”

San Luis may be saved by the fact that Colombia has told CONMEBOL that they don’t want Mexican teams playing in Bogota:

“This decision has been taken on the recommendation of the World Health Organisation,” the Bogota city government’s sub-secretary for health Juan Varela told reporters.
“The decision has been taken because we are in stage five of a pandemic. The World Health Organisation is very demanding. They say we cannot have events with more than 40 people, when a country or origin of the virus is involved,”
“Unfortunately the teams come from a positive country and we are following the recommendation.”

Not sure where that leaves us, but I’m pretty sure this wasn’t how anyone saw the landmark 50th Copa Libertadores going.

Here’s what the last 16 looks like:

Gremio (Brazil) v. San Martin (Peru)
Boca Juniors (Argentina) v. Defensor Sporting (Uruguay)
Nacional (Uruguay) v. San Luis (Mexico)
Sao Paulo (Brazil) v. Chivas (Mexico)
Cruzeiro (Brazil) v. Universidad de Chile (Chile)
Sport Recife (Brazil) v. Palmeiras (Brazil)
Libertad (Paraguay) v. Estudiantes de la Plata (Argentina)
Caracas (Venezuela) v. Deportivo Cuenca (Ecuador)

First legs are May 6th, second legs are May 13th. The teams listed first are the higher seed, and will play the second leg at home. Which means the San Luis and Chivas home games happen in five days time.