Tottenham Hotspur could benefit from government relaxations for red-list countries

According to The Athletic (subscription required), Tottenham Hotspur could benefit from government relaxations on international players returning from red-list countries. The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) is pondering over exempting those players from the mandatory 10-day quarantine and reducing it to five days. Those new guidelines are being passed on to the Premier League clubs.

With the COVID pandemic raging on, football continues but in a different manner with quarantine, isolation and other measures. Fans have only recently returned to stadiums as a glimpse of normality returns. However, there are still a number of strict quarantine guidelines being implemented by countries to curb the spread.

At the start of this month during the international break, a number of Premier League sides refused to send their South American players as they would have to quarantine for 10 days on return and miss games. A few players such as Tottenham trio Cristian Romero, Giovani Lo Celso and Davinson Sanchez went regardless.

Hence, they were unavailable for the two games against Crystal Palace and Rennes. With another international break in October, the DCMS could relax the guidelines and reduce the quarantine period to five days. The new plan has been passed on to Tottenham and other Premier League clubs so that they can release players without any concerns.

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These new rules will surely benefit the clubs as their South American stars will not miss more than one game on their return. This will put clubs at ease in releasing their players and not encountering any issues like they encountered the last time.

And hopefully, this goes one step forward in the right direction towards ensuring harmony between the international FAs and football clubs.