LaLiga scraps Fuenlabrada-Depor playoff due to Covid-19 outbreak
Madrid Desk, Jul 26 (efe-epa).- Spain’s LaLiga on Sunday said it would cancel a play-off game that had been postponed in the country’s second division football league following an outbreak of Covid-19 at one of the club’s due to play.
The decision from the league organizers means Fuenlabrada will miss out on a chance to reach the top-tier playoff spots in Spain’s second division, while it also confirms the relegation of Deportivo de La Coruña to the third-tier.
Depor’s descent into Segunda B, a notoriously tricky league to exit, comes exactly 20 years after they lifted the LaLiga title, marking a miserable end to the season for the Spanish football giants.
In a statement, LaLiga said the game would be cancelled altogether due to “exceptional causes and/or force majeure.”
It thanked Fuenlabrada for its sportsmanship in supporting the conclusion.
It said it would inform the Spanish Football Association (RFEF) that Elche will now contend for promotion from the second division.
Fuenlabrada released a statement saying it had not withdrawn its interest in playing the match once its players had recovered and said that LaLiga was unable to make the decision by itself.
It added that the decision was also in the hands of the competition committee, the RFEF and the country’s sporting council.
On Saturday, Fuenlabrada said there were 28 confirmed Covid-19 cases at the club after a new round of testing detected 12 infections.
The club said nine of the new cases had been detected among players and staff quarantining at a hotel in northwestern city of A Coruña while the other four were picked up by tests on members in the capital Madrid, where the neighborhood team is based.
