MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentine FA wants Ukrainian league players allowed to work for other clubs

Players need to keep competing, Tapia stressed

Argentine Football Association (AFA) President Claudio Tapia Thursday announced a petition was to be filed before the sport's world governing body FIFA so that players registered to compete within Ukraine's professional league be allowed to play elsewhere despite transfer regulations.

Players are registered to represent any given club at the beginning of each season and may not be transferred to any other club belonging to a league associated with FIFA. But in light of the current events, the Ukrainian league is not functioning and it does not seem likely that managerial offices of any of those clubs will be in a position to issue the usual paperwork involving the international transfer of a player.

Tapia said he understood how awkward this request may be and was not overoptimistic about getting the go-ahead. But he insisted it was worth at least trying.

“We foresaw the need that these players might have,” Tapia said during an interview. Tapia meant the physical and emotional consequences a professional footballer would go through after months away from pitches and training.

“We understand what they must have gone through and we know that they need to work.”

This measure would benefit Argentine players Claudio Spinelli, Francisco Di Franco, Fabricio Alvarenga and Gerónimo Poblete, who at the time the war started was on pre-season in Turkey, but who still has not managed to get his family to leave Ukraine.

“I am lucky to be here, many could not leave; nobody imagined this madness. It is not human what this man is doing, we should not approve of it,” FC Oleksandria's Spinelli said about Russian President Vladimir Putin.