Sunday evening saw a hugely dramatic international football moment, as Brazilian officials entered the pitch to try and remove Argentina players.
The stance was that those players who had travelled from the Premier League didn’t declare their quarantine status correctly, and therefore shouldn’t have been able to play, and shouldn’t have even entered Brazil.
It all added to the drama around Emiliano Buendia, Emiliano Martinez, Giovani Lo Celso and Cristian Romero. Tottenham hadn’t wanted their players to travel to South America, but they’d done so anyway.
Aston Villa had reached an agreement with the AFA which was supposed to see their pair take part in the first two matches then leave before Thursday night’s game against Bolivia. That all seemed to be useless after national team manager Lionel Scaloni said all the players in the squad would be available for all three games.
This is because of the original agreement with Aston Villa, but given there was no agreement with Tottenham, the situation is less certain for Lo Celso and Romero.
Spurs want them to return to Europe today, however, ‘the difference is that there was no explicit agreement for them to return early’.
