The coach of Boca Juniors, Miguel Ángel Russo, believes it is “very good” that the Argentine League will be played from February to December starting in 2021 as announced by the Argentine Football Association (AFA).

The coach, who last March became champions of the Superliga in his country with Boca, also expressed his satisfaction that the Copa Libertadores has been extended until December because this gives the team that wins it greater chances of reaching the Club World Cup in a better competitive level.

Russo referred to these and other topics during the video chat organized today by the South American Football Confederation (Conmebol) through the social media Facebook, in which his Colombian colleague Reinaldo Rueda, the coach of Chile, also participated as a guest.

“It's very good that the AFA has decided to organize the calendar and play from February to December, because the local tournament and the Copa Libertadores will go hand in hand. This is something that I was asking and wishing for, and because of these pandemic (of the coronavirus) things, it happens. It's good that we organize ourselves,” asserted the 64-year-old coach.

Precisely due to COVID-19, the AFA also decided to end the 2019-2020 season, suspend relegations, change the calendar of the Superliga -which began in July and ended in March- and that the pending qualifications for international cups and promotions be defined, if possible, in new tournaments that will be held in the second semester.

The measure, which was announced on Monday by the president of the AFA, Claudio 'Chiqui' Tapia, was implemented through a resolution published on the institution's website.

“An appropriate calendar will help us organize ourselves at all levels, in international club tournaments and also with the Argentine national team in the World Cup qualifiers,” Russo added.

The Argentine coach also declared himself in favor of playing the Copa Libertadores until December.

“It is very positive because this way South Americans can arrive with good rhythm to the Club World Cup. Before it ended in June, we had to play the other tournament in December and, in those six months, the champion of America had disadvantages because many players left. Now you win the Libertadores and almost immediately you have to play the final of the world,” he explained.

In 2007, Russo gave Boca their sixth and last title in the Libertadores with a squad of players led by Juan Román Riquelme, today the club's second vice president, who has expressed several times that the team from that year was “the best” Xeneize team he was part of.

Russo returned to Boca Juniors in early 2020 after a three-year period abroad in which he coached the Colombian Millonarios, the Peruvian Alianza Lima, and the Paraguayan Cerro Porteño, and in which he also overcame cancer. EFE