Mexican season canceled with no champion to protect ‘football family’

Andre Pierre Gignac (L) of Tigres vies for the ball with Pablo Aguilar (R) of Cruz Azul during the Mexican Clausura 2019 football tournament match at the Universitario stadium in Monterrey, Mexico, on January 19, 2019. (Photo by Julio Cesar AGUILAR / AFP)

Mexico’s top flight Liga MX canceled its Clausura campaign with no title winner on Friday in a bid to protect the football community in the country.

Mexico has two championships per year, the Apertura and the Clausura, and the latter was halted by coronavirus in March with 10 of the 17 rounds of matches completed.

At a general meeting Liga MX decided to end the term “to make sure nobody in the football family, players, coaches, directors, referees, fans or media, get hurt”.

No start date for the next Apertura has been decided.

“Guidelines from the Ministry of Health will establish the date,” a statement said.

The move comes a day after attempts to restart the league were hampered when eight Santos Laguna players tested positive for coronavirus.

In mid-April the league had already decided to tackle issues of stability by suspending promotion and relegation for its top two divisions for five years.

With more than 6,000 fatalities, Mexico has the second highest COVID-19 death toll in Latin America after Brazil.

Play stopped in the Liga MX in mid-March, and less than a week later the league’s president Enrique Bonilla announced he had caught the illness, without serious symptoms.