Not only player safety, but fans as well. And remember there are many tourists who attend these games who have nothing to do with the political issue.
Missed the game today but it looks like I didn't miss much. It has to be surreal to play in an empty stadium. Specially one of that size.
Even in my country Iraq, the Kurds held a similar referendum albeit the historical and political background being completely different, there was no violence at all, the Iraqi government waited until the vote was done and then blocked it for being illegal.
The Spanish Federation should sanction themselves for scheduling the match on the same day as the election. What makes that even dumber is that - as we all know - the date and time of La Liga fixtures aren't even decided until about 3 weeks beforehand! We knew about this election 4 weeks ago. Would also be a bit unfair to Las Palmas to cancel the match at the last minute. So tough position that the Board and players were put in (intentionally). Anyway, as I mention above it shouldn't have come down to today. Its not like we didn't see this election and violence coming from a mile away.
Initially I thought the same thing about the scheduling. Why not Saturday ? But Barca played a CL game on Wednesday. And when a team plays on Wednesday, if I am not mistaken, they always schedule the La Liga match on Sunday to give the team an extra day's rest ... specially when it's an away game.
While watching the match yesterday, I was actually thinking why they didn’t they just block the section which have direct access to the pitch. I guess the camp nou was not entirely sold, so maybe they should have pushed every ticket holder a tier up or just let everyone sit where they want in a first come first sit basis. This way the people could still have voiced their opinions and the issue of having pitch invaders would have been dealt with. Or is there something I am not taking in account here?
Well one reason was probably morons who could rush the pitch. Notice that even when playing behind closed doors there was someone who rushed on to the pitch. Imagine if it was 60000 angry catalans and some Spanish hard-core fans watching the game?! I initially didn't understand at all why they wanted to play behind closed doors but when someone rushed the pitch then I felt more inline with the decisions. Guess I didn't think this through. But God knows! In the end 3p, 2 goals from Messi. Nothing more to discuss. On to the internationals!
At Camp Nou. Much confusion. Speaking to this family who've travelled from Melbourne...booked 3 months ago to see Neymar. pic.twitter.com/xC0mt252uo— Andy Mitten (@AndyMitten) October 1, 2017
Surely they could've made an exception in this extreme case. We would still be talking about 3 days after the match in Lisbon. I'm sure both clubs would have been in favor of a switch to Saturday (Las Palmas also doesn't want to make the long trip to Barcelona if there's a good chance the match will be postponed). FFS, they postponed a clasico to a Monday because of an election a few years ago!
we go 7 on 7 and until oct 15th,we stay here. Then we start a bunch of tougher games including Atleti/Athletic/Sevilla. Messi and Suarez are involved in the toughest phase of their life with neither team sure of qualification yet.Would be brutal if either or both of them done make it to WC 2018.
Uruguay is fairly safe. Even if they screw up Venezuela away, they have Bolivia at home to close it off. Argentina has it fairly tough and will have to sweat it out. Depends if they get the result vs Peru who have been the 2nd best team in the 2nd half of qualifiers if I am not mistaken or if Ecuador has anything to play in the final game. Chile is the one in most trouble.
Unfortunately the most likely outcome seems to be a world tour for Messi in November: Wellington, New Zealand on (probably) the 10th, Buenos Aires on the 14th and back to Spain for an away match on the 18th. So still playing a match every 4 days while travelling to the other end of the planet (literally!**) I will use this opportunity to reiterate my latest pet-peeve: there are too many int'l breaks and the breaks are too short. If they made the int'l breaks twice as long (and had half as many) they would be able to reduce travel (significantly so in the case of players not playing in the same continent as their nationality) and players would have a full 4 days rest minimum between the NT match and the first club match upon return (i.e. NT match on Monday at the latest, club match on Saturday at the earliest). **Interesting related factoid: The antipode of Wellington, NZ is just outside Valladolid, Spain.
Yeah, although Peru is the hottest team in CONMEBOL apart from Brasil! And even though Ecuador are struggling, I'm never confident about Argentina playing at altitude, and the recent match in La Paz was a reminder why. So two tough matches.