| | |  News Around the Republic of Mexico | May 2009 
Mexico Turns Its Back on South America
 Jack Bell - New York Times
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The latest victims of the outbreak of swine flu are two of the most-revered things in Mexico — soccer and the country’s international reputation. One is tangible, the other a sensitive state of mind.
On Friday, Jorge Compean, the president of the Mexican federation (link in Spanish), said the country, which is technically part of Concacaf (the North, Central American and Caribbean confederation), would withdraw from participation in three competitions in South America overseen by Conmebol.
The decision came after the two Mexican clubs remaining in the 50th edition of the Copa Libertadores — Chivas Guadalajara and Santos Luis — were treated like (medical) pariahs and denied a chance to play Round of 16 games in Mexico against their Brazilian (São Paulo) and Uruguayan (Nacional) opponents because of the visiting clubs’ (legitimate) fears of being exposed to infection and perhaps carrying it back to their countries. Nacional was to play San Luis.
Mexican and Conmebol officials had originally postponed the matches in an effort to find neutral ground to play the games. Their efforts to place the games in Colombia and Chile, however, failed.
Compean said that Mexican participation in Copa América, Copa Sudaméricana and Copa Libertadores had been canceled and that the two clubs in the Copa Liberatdores had withdrawn. Next year, Mexico would have had five of its club teams entered in the top South American club championship (three were entered this year).
One additional casualty of the Mexican decision could be the annual InterLiga tournament (link in Spanish), which is organized by Major League Soccer and Soccer United Marketing, its commercial unit, and played at stadiums in the southern and western United States. The InterLiga began in 2004 and sends two teams to the preliminary stage of the Copa Libertadores after the eight-team tournament.
“At the moment, S.U.M. has not communicated with F.M.F. regarding their Friday announcement,” Marisabel Munoz, a S.U.M. spokeswoman, said in an e-mail message on Saturday. “InterLiga is an official F.M.F. competition, and we await further news from F.M.F. regarding its future.”
Compean, and indeed all Mexicans, have been stung by what they perceive to be worldwide condemnation after the country and its people were ostracized during the swine flu outbreak. Some countries canceled all air travel to Mexico while other quarantined visiting Mexicans.
“If we participate again, great, but if not, there’s plenty of activity in Mexican football,” Compean told The Associated Press. “The ball is in their court now. For us, the game is over. There is more to Mexico than what happens in the Southern Hemisphere.”
This weekend’s final round of games in the Mexican leagues will be the first in several weeks in which fans will be allowed into stadiums across the country, but with stadiums limited to 50 percent of capacity. (Early Saturday, two clubs, Atlas and San Luis, said they would not open their stadiums to fans for their games, according to Goal.com.) The lifting of the ban applies everywhere in Mexico, except at Chivas’s stadium because of the recent death of three people from the flu in Guadalajara.
The decision by Mexico seemingly brings to an end weeks of bad health, bad feelings and bad behavior.
By most estimates, the H1N1 flu has caused at least 40 deaths in Mexico.
On the soccer field, the Chivas player Hector Reynoso did nothing to help his country’s or club’s reputation when he spit on a player for Everton during a Copa match in Viña del Mar, Chile, on April 29. Reynoso then launched what are indelicately called snot rockets from each nostril at Sebastián Penco, while saying, “now you have swine flu.” What could Reynoso been thinking? Then again, he clearly wasn’t. He was suspended for the rest of the competition, a suspension that is now moot.
Because of the withdrawals of the Mexican teams, São Paulo and Nacional advance to the tournament’s quarterfinals. The home-and-away final round is scheduled to be played July 1 and July 8. |
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