ON March 11, less than 48 hours before football was locked down, 3,000 Atletico Madrid supporters travelled to Anfield.
It is not just with hindsight that we can suggest that this was lunacy.
As the coronavirus crisis took hold, Madrid was one of the worst-affected cities on the planet.
Yet many of that army of Atletico supporters flew from Madrid to London airports and took trains to Liverpool to watch a Champions League match.
Many others jetted directly to the north-west and stayed in Merseyside hotels for a night or two.
Now medical analysis has directly linked 41 additional coronavirus deaths on Merseyside to the Liverpool-Atletico match.
Almost three months later, the British Government — now widely regarded as dangerously inept, whatever your political allegiance — will introduce new measures insisting those arriving in the country must go into quarantine for 14 days.
Talk about “after the horse has bolted”.
Likewise the Cheltenham Festival, held that same week, which according to research published in the Sunday Times is reckoned to be responsible for 37 additional coronavirus deaths.
Again, this is hardly a case of being wise after the event.
Many who were at Cheltenham, as the full scale of the pandemic began to hit home, felt it was madness for a quarter of a million people to be sardined into the racecourse that week.
Still, the estimated death toll from the Anfield fixture is higher than for all four days of Cheltenham combined — because Madrid was a worldwide centre for a highly infectious deadly disease.
It is staggeringly weird that a Government elected on an anti-immigration ticket, failed to put curbs on immigration at the one point when it would have been entirely sensible to do so.
Yet with the health crisis easing markedly throughout the continent, new quarantine measures will be introduced — although not until June 8, when we might reasonably expect coronavirus infection rates to have decreased further still.
And, as SunSport exclusively revealed last week, there will be no exemption for sport.
This puts the last remaining international events due to be held in Britain this summer — including Formula One’s British Grand Prix and remaining European club football matches — in doubt.
So the Government want to get Premier League football back on to “raise national morale” but they are happy to scupper the Champions League and Europa League.
Because 3,000 Atletico fans travelling from a global coronavirus hotspot, approaching the height of the pandemic, was OK.
Yet a Real Madrid team, who would all have been fully tested, will not be able to travel without fans for a behind-closed-doors match against Manchester City?
If you can remember as far back as March, City achieved an excellent 2-1 first-leg win over Real in the Bernabeu, but the return fixture — like half of the Champions League last-16 ties — is yet to be played.
Uefa want those remaining Champions League matches to go ahead at their intended venues — perhaps in August but possibly earlier — along with all the last-16 Europa League ties, which feature Manchester United, Wolves and Rangers.
The quarters, semis and finals are then intended to be played as one-off matches during one week in August in the same city, probably the scheduled final venues of Istanbul and Gdansk.
Chelsea will not be as bothered about all this as City, given that they are 3-0 down from the home leg of their last-16 clash with Bayern Munich — a tie which they might have to concede if the UK Government refuses to relent, given they would have to be quarantined for 14 days on re-entry.
The Government say they will review the quarantine measures every three weeks — so on June 29, then on July 20 — too late for the British GP and also worryingly tight for the likely staging of European football fixtures.
Perhaps if City signed Dominic Cummings they might be allowed to “follow their instincts” and get the Real fixture on.
Because it was OK for Boris Johnson’s dressdown Rasputin to travel from London to Durham when he thought he might have had coronavirus in April.
But it won’t be OK for footballers who know they haven’t got coronavirus to travel to Britain for a match when the pandemic is hopefully petering out.
Sport has attempted to follow Government advice throughout these unprecedented times.
But now the Government is no longer trusted on the issue, sport must find a voice and speak out against quarantine plans which are being introduced several months too late and will scupper your foreign holiday plans too.
Government ministers and MPs were quick to give football a kicking over the pay-cut row a couple of months ago.
Yet at least football clubs have condemned and punished players who breached lockdown rules, rather than concocting excuses to defend them as Johnson has done with Cummings.
Sport must no longer kowtow to a hypocritical Government which has ceded all moral authority.
ARSENE’S INVINCIBLE
LOVE the fact Arsene Wenger admits he took satisfaction from Liverpool failing to emulate the unbeaten Premier League campaign achieved by his Arsenal Invincibles in 2003-04.
And also his slightly peevish insistence he will never return to the Emirates, even as a fan.
It wasn’t just Wenger’s deep intelligence and pure- football fundamentalism that made him such a fascinating figure, it was also an insane level of competitiveness which often sounded like an endearingly childish spitefulness.
It’s heartening to hear the old boy hasn’t changed.
RAFA BENITEZ
THE least surprising news of the week was Rafa Benitez letting it be known that he fancies a return to Newcastle if the Saudis complete their takeover.
So, Rafa, what’s attracting you back to a club which is about to become the richest on the planet?
The lionising of Benitez on Tyneside always was a curious phenomenon, mainly borne of rightful antipathy towards owner Mike Ashley.
But Steve Bruce, never afforded such messianic status, has got a better points-per-game ratio than Benitez managed in either of his two full seasons in the Premier League with Newcastle, and also led Toon to the FA Cup quarter-finals for the first time in 14 years.
Bruce is highly unlikely to survive a Saudi takeover but if he were replaced by Benitez — rather than, say, Mauricio Pochettino — it would be particularly unjust.
