Silly question, but who is a friendly friendly for?
I opened a tab this morning, on the 7:32 train. Argentina beat Burkina Faso 7-0, in a friendly, in Buenos Aires, overnight from Saturday to Sunday. 3-0 after twelve minutes, 5-0 before the break, two more goals after. That part I understood. It’s what came next that cost me two pages of notebook.
Burkina were in Morocco, on a stopover, after a qualifier for the CAN 2027 (the Africa Cup of Nations) won 1-0 against the Central African Republic. Some flights were cancelled. According to RMC Sport, all the first-team players but one decided not to fly to Buenos Aires. The Burkinabe federation spoke of “constraints linked in particular to travel time” that “prompted reservations among the players”. I noted down the word “reservations”. It’s a very calm word.
And then the point that made me look up: the federation could not cancel the match, for contractual reasons, according to FasoSports quoted by RMC Sport. So it cancelled another match, its U23s against Mali, to send the U23s to Argentina. To play a friendly, they removed a match. I drew a diagram with arrows. It goes round in circles.
I’m told that’s just how contracts are, fine, but what does that mean? If it can’t be cancelled, what makes it friendly? I checked, and actually nobody knows. The word stays on the team sheet.
“Friendly means nobody goes down. Apart from that, it’s a match, mind you.”
I filed the tab next to the one about matches behind closed doors. Next page: Argentina play Benin next Tuesday at the Monumental, a match billed as a farewell to Lionel Messi. Anyway, I still have a lot to learn.
It’s true, we checked: VoetbalPrimeur.be.
