Amateur football has the hope and the need to get back to business in the city. Course owners, tournament organizers and referees are working together to create the conditions to return. They are convinced that, in the current pandemic context, reactivating discipline, complying with a protocol, is preferable to clandestine and unregulated activity.
“We are working together with the Municipality to evaluate the best moment to be able to start gradually, we are waiting to start. There is no date yet, ”said Marcelo Pichipil, one of the organizers of the Don Pedro Tournament, who also stated that from the commune there is a predisposition to work on a solution.
Last month, from Don Pedro, they opened a dialogue with the teams that make up the tournament. “They are eager to return, it was more than anything to have a contact with the teams and obviously so that when we can reach an agreement, a consensus, and have the teams predisposed to start. It will surely be progressive, all the teams will not come back at the same time ”, Pichipil explained.
“We do not have a possible date, what we do know and have raised is that in neighboring cities they are playing and we have seen promotions of some football spaces and others that are being played clandestinely. We have presented a protocol, the Municipality has taken it and we believe that we have much less risk of contagion than what is happening now, that people go, play, without any care, in many places that perhaps are not authorized. That is our way of defending our return to activity ”, he highlighted.
Step by step, that’s how they plan to work again. “First we are going to start with a friendly match, the teams have to request their turn, a protocol will be followed, and once we can be certain of how many teams are able to return, we will do something more reduced to end the year and start the next year, hopefully, in a correct way ”, said the organizer.
More than seven months passed since the activity was cut off and many families were left without an income. “We understand the situation, but there are people who football is their only income, both the referees, the fields and the organizers, who are the three legs of the activity. We are all independent, but we come together to be able to carry out the tournaments and obviously there are people who have more need than others and need a return to activity ”, Pichipil stressed.
