Chapecoense’s opponents will forfeit their final Brasileirão match

There is one game remaining in the 2016 Brasileirão season, and one of the fixtures in the final round will almost certainly not be played. Following a plane crash that killed 71 people, including most of Chapecoense’s squad, their scheduled opponents Atlético Mineiro have decided to forfeit the match and give an awarded victory to Chape.

Chapecoense president Ivan Tozzo spoke with Brazilian confederation president Marco Polo Del Nero — who wanted the game to go ahead next weekend — about the match on Wednesday. “He told me: ‘This game has to happen. It has to be a big celebration,’” Tozzo told Globo about his conversation with Del Nero. But Tozzo made it clear that, while he understood Del Nero’s position that the game should be used as a celebration of Chapecoense, they thought it was too soon to play.

On Thursday, Atlético Mineiro president Daniel Nepomuceno issued a statement saying that his team would not take the pitch for the match. Instead, they would forfeit, giving the win to Chapecoense.

Galo defender Gabriel spoke to the press about his team president’s decision.

“The CBF have to understand, there’s no way. Arriving in a city after a tragedy like this, it is very sad, we don’t have the mood to celebrate goals or enter the stadium. I believe that the CBF will understand what Atlético are thinking. It is a very important decision that the president took.”

If Chapecoense were to play in the game, they would have to field a team mostly made up of youth players, likely not up to the standard of the Brasileirão. And, given the circumstances, the senior professionals in the squad would almost certainly struggle to perform up to their best. Playing the match is an unreasonable thing for Del Nero to ask of Chape.

In the event CBF accepts Atlético Mineiro’s decision and awards the match to Chape via forfeit, it will have almost no affect on the season’s final results. Galo is guaranteed to finish in the Copa Libertadores first stage qualification spots, and cannot move up to automatic group stage qualification or down to Copa Sudamericana qualification places. Chape is locked into a Copa Sudamericana qualification place, and cannot move up into the top six or out of the top 12, into a different tier.

Even if there were competitive consequences for other teams, the CBF would have to find a solution other than playing the game in Chapecó as scheduled. But since the game has no consequences for other teams, simply not playing the game is the only sensible decision to make.