‘Shameful’: Bolsonaro denounced for hosting Copa América amid pandemic

• Brazil president accused of mishandling Covid outbreak
• Football tournament moved from Colombia and Argentina

Tom Phillips in Rio de Janeiro
Tue 1 Jun 2021 16.11 BST

The Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, has sparked outrage after approving plans to hold South America’s answer to the European Championship in his Covid-stricken country despite warnings Brazil is steaming into a potentially calamitous third wave of infections.

The Copa América was originally due to be co-hosted by Colombia and Argentina, but their struggles with deadly street protests and coronavirus put paid to those plans.

On Monday, in a surprise move, the South American Football Confederation, Conmebol, announced that Brazil, which has the world’s second highest Covid death toll, would host the footballing event between 13 June and 17 July. “I want to say a special thanks to President Jair Bolsonaro and his cabinet for hosting the tournament,” tweeted Conmebol’s Paraguayan president, Alejandro Domínguez.

The announcement caused an immediate outcry in Brazil, where more than 462,000 lives have been lost in a Covid outbreak Bolsonaro stands accused of catastrophically mishandling.

Renan Calheiros, a Brazilian senator who is the rapporteur of a congressional inquiry into Bolsonaro’s Covid response, condemned the “unbelievable” idea of holding what he claimed would be a “championship of death”. Calheiros urged Brazilian players such as Neymar to refuse to take to the field “while your relatives and acquaintances continue to die”.

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