Tottenham pair Cristian Romero and Giovani Lo Celso are among four Premier League players to have been hit with bans over the Covid chaos which saw last year’s clash between Argentina and Brazil abandoned.
Lo Celso, who is on loan from Spurs at Villarreal, Romero and Aston Villa duo Emiliano Buendia and Emiliano Martinez have all been banned for two international matches over a failure to comply with Fifa’s return to football international match protocol.
The quartet travelled to Sao Paolo to play for Argentina in their crunch World Cup qualifier last September, allegedly in breach of Brazil’s Covid regulations at the time, which barred arrivals from the UK who were not Brazilian citizens or permanent residents.
The players were accused of falsifying documents by failing to declare they had been in the UK within the past fortnight.
Amid farcical scenes, health officials marched onto the pitch to halt the game less than ten minutes after it had kicked off, with Martinez, Romero and Lo Celso all in Argentina’s starting lineup.
The Brazilian and Argentinian federations have also been fined 500,000 and 200,000 Swiss francs, respectively, and ordered to replay the fixture at a date and location to be decided by Fifa, though both have already secured qualification for this winter’s World Cup.
