July 7 \u2013\u00a0Shamrock Rovers captain Roberto \u2018Pico\u2019 Lopes has renewed his call for the Football Association of Ireland (FAI) to refuse to play this autumn\u2019s Nations League fixture against Israel, insisting \u201csome things are bigger than football\u201d ahead of Wednesday night\u2019s Extraordinary General Meeting.\u00a0
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The Cape Verde international, who returned to Dublin this week after helping his side reach the last 32 of the World Cup\u00a0before bowing out in style in extra time to Argentina, has emerged as one of the leading voices opposing the fixture in his role as chairman of the Professional Footballers\u2019 Association of Ireland.\u00a0
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FAI delegates will vote on a board motion that\u00a0seeks\u00a0to reaffirm the association\u2019s commitment to fulfilling its UEFA obligations while acknowledging the widespread concern surrounding the fixture.\u00a0
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Lopes, however, believes the match should not go ahead under any circumstances.\u00a0
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\u201cMy decision hasn\u2019t changed, the game for me has to be stopped, it shouldn\u2019t be played,\u201d he said.\u00a0
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\u201cI know they were talking about neutral\u00a0venues,\u00a0it\u2019s not really solving the problem, it\u2019s just moving it.\u00a0So\u00a0I think hopefully the EGM\u00a0goes the right way, some things are bigger than football and this is\u00a0definitely one\u00a0of them.\u00a0
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\u201cMy stance hasn\u2019t\u00a0changed,\u00a0the game shouldn\u2019t be played and hopefully the right decision will come out of it.\u201d\u00a0
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The issue has become one of the most divisive Irish\u00a0football\u00a0has faced in years. UEFA has already\u00a0relocated\u00a0Israel\u2019s home fixtures to neutral venues because of the ongoing security situation, but that has done little to ease opposition from players and supporters in Ireland.\u00a0
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Lopes said footballers should never have been left carrying the burden of deciding whether to\u00a0represent\u00a0their country in such circumstances.\u00a0
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\u201cIt\u2019s an incredibly hard position for players to be in. They\u00a0shouldn\u2019t\u00a0have to answer this question. They\u00a0shouldn\u2019t\u00a0be in this situation. It should have been taken away from them.\u00a0
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\u201cAs players\u2019 unions, we need to protect those\u00a0players\u00a0and I think that\u2019s why the PFA Ireland were so vocal on it because our interest is the players and we have to look after them.\u00a0
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\u201cAnd if the players don\u2019t want to play that game \u2013 and we\u2019ve seen the results in our league alone, where the majority don\u2019t feel comfortable with the game being played, and that has to extend on to national teams as well.\u00a0
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\u201cIs anyone going to refuse to play for their country? Probably not,\u00a0it\u2019s\u00a0a very difficult\u00a0position to be put in.\u00a0
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\u201cIt needed to be taken out of their\u00a0hands\u00a0and it hasn\u2019t been and we still need to make those calls and bang on the door for the powers-that-be to stop the game.\u201d\u00a0
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The PFA Ireland\u2019s campaign has also attracted attention beyond Ireland. Lopes revealed the union has received backing from world players\u2019 body FIFPRO, which has followed developments closely as national associations wrestle with the sporting and political implications of Israel\u2019s participation in UEFA competitions.\u00a0
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\u201cThere\u2019s a few people in FIFPRO who have been in touch with\u00a0me\u00a0and they\u2019re really impressed with what we\u2019re doing and they\u2019re encouraging more federations to have a stance.\u00a0
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\u201cIt just goes to show we\u2019re not just shouting and people aren\u2019t hearing.\u00a0
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\u201cPeople are\u00a0actually looking\u00a0at what\u00a0we\u2019re\u00a0doing\u00a0and\u00a0they\u2019re\u00a0impressed and they are saying, \u2018we need more people to stand up like PFA Ireland have done\u2019.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is coming from FIFPRO themselves and they\u2019re probably looking internally to see what more they can do to help associations.\u201d\u00a0
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Contact the writer of this story, Harry Ewing, at\u00a0[email\u00a0protected]<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"July 7 \u2013\u00a0Shamrock Rovers captain Roberto \u2018Pico\u2019 Lopes has renewed his call for the Football Association of Ireland…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":194151,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[33],"tags":[46285,37,57704],"class_list":["post-194150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-fai","tag-israel","tag-shamrock-rovers"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116878466283428052","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=194150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194150\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/194151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}