The Hindu : Sport / Football : FIFA's altitude ruling flames South American soccer rivalries

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Thursday, May 31, 2007
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FIFA's altitude ruling flames South American soccer rivalries

La Paz: Fans joined soccer officials from Andean nations in blaming perennial South American soccer powers Argentina and Brazil for instigating FIFA's ban on games in high-altitude cities, fanning the flames of traditional sports rivalries across the continent.

Guido Loyaza, former head of the Bolivian soccer federation, told Bolivia's La Razon newspaper that ``you don't have to look across the ocean'' to find the ``enemy'' responsible for the ruling.

FIFA on Sunday decided to prohibit international matches above 2,500 metres, citing health and safety concerns but angering Bolivians because it means a ban on major matches in their most important cities.

Many Bolivians are accusing Brazil and Argentina, whose teams have gasped and occasionally flopped at the 3,600m altitude of La Paz and in other high-altitude Bolivian cities.

Soccer officials in the two lowland nations, meanwhile, were only too happy to take the credit. Kleber Leite, vice president of the Brazilian club Flamengo — which filed a formal complaint with FIFA after a February match with Bolivia's Real Potosi that was played in freezing rain at 4,000 metres - crowed that the ruling was ``a victory for humankind.''

Bolivian President Evo Morales, an avid soccer fan, sought to downplay the international friction in the name of South American unity, a favourite talking point.

His government announced on Tuesday that Argentina would back their efforts to overturn the ruling.

To create unity

``We are aiming to create South American unity, which was the dream of our ancestors,'' Morales said. ``But without sports, without football, there can be no South American unity.''

The issue has incited Bolivia so much that the newspaper 'El Diaro' carried 15 stories about it on its Web site. La Razon vowed to rally 1 million letters of protest to FIFA President Sepp Blatter.

Bolivian talk radio haggled over the air speed of a soccer ball kicked at various altitudes.

Morales has made it a matter of state, vowing to call the leaders of Argentina and Brazil and to convene a summit with Peru, Ecuador and Colombia, which are also affected by the decision seen here as a lowland conspiracy.

Morales called for city, state, and national governments excluded by the ban to meet June 6 in La Paz for a summit billed as ``Unity for the Universality of Sport.''

Morales also called for his countrymen to play sports in the street today to prove the value of high-altitude sport. The President himself will play a soccer match against Bolivia's international press corps at La Paz's Hernando Siles stadium.

In Colombia, Bogota Mayor Luis Eduardo Garzon, 56, promised to climb 3,300m Monserrate peak today to show that high altitude poses no health danger. — AP

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