After suspending play due to the spread of the coronavirus, La Liga planned to test all of its first- and second-division players. A few have already tested positive.
The valor of Real Valladolid rejecting La Liga’s Covid-19 testing
“No player has presented any symptoms and we believe that there are people out there who are much less well off than we are who need them far more than we do.”
Photo by Juan Manuel Serrano Arce/Getty Images
However, on Tuesday, the head of the Spanish Football Association, Luis Rubiales called the league’s plan “irresponsible.” He said the league failed to see reality by taking already limited testing kits and giving them to footballers when there are ordinary people, with severe symptoms and lives at greater stake, who need those tests more.
When La Liga offered those testing kits to Real Valladolid, the team rejected their offer under the same principle. The team’s spokesperson David Espinar said:
“La Liga offered them to us [the tests] but we have not taken them for medical and social reasons. No player has presented any symptoms and we believe that there are people out there who are much less well off than we are who need them far more than we do. It is those [people] who should have priority.”
Spain has the second-most total cases of coronavirus in Europe, and has been in lockdown as a result. So far there have been 558 confirmed deaths.
It’s easy to see what La Liga are trying to do. The league wants to know how many players are sick, and make sure everyone quickly recovers, so the league season can be finished at some point. Their obligation is to themselves and to those sponsors who have invested in the competition. This behavior is in line with a league that waited until players tested positive before suspending competition.
La Liga’s position may not be surprising, but it does show the fractured design of society. The league is only making the truth of our world comically obvious: the rich, like footballers, are more valuable than everyone else, and the money corporations like La Liga make is a more immediate concern than public wellbeing. They are watching people die, and rather than rushing to mitigate those tragedies, they are instead taking tests that would be more helpful to others. Even in that regard, the players are privileged only because they are products to be sold.
Rubiales’ statement and Valladolid’s rejection are heartening, but they are only small counters to the persistent and frustrating design of the world around them. As this virus ravages through countries and takes lives, the problems of the societies dealing with it are being exposed. We are learning, or rather re-learning, which groups are considered worthwhile and which are not. La Liga’s zeal for money is just a small part of this large reveal and nothing we didn’t know. But it is embarrassing for them, as it has been for other leagues in which players are being given tests, that even in a moment of global crisis they couldn’t forgo their selfish drive just once.
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