Givethanks
Superstar
You think La Copa and The Euros are getting get a push back?
Essential The Official Football (Soccer) Thread - We are SO back, the Premier League returns!
Kunty McPhuck
Scust Szn has Returned
Yes. 2021.
At the moment Corona = How big is a hole/how long is a piece of string answer.
Kunty McPhuck
Scust Szn has Returned
Still have the UFC going on as planned, at least until a fighter catches it. Dana doesn’t give a f#ck about people’s health
Dana gunna Dana
a$$hole Promoters always seem to live long.I reckon tomorrow will be the last event for a while. As soon as UFC people start getting it, they will shutdown. Then again some people think its fake news in America, until a family member dies from it.
Last edited:
The Libertadores game between Grêmio and SC Inter had 8 Red Cards
TobiOT
Veteran
TobiOT
Veteran
Need your football fix? Enjoy
Need your football fix? Enjoy
Brasil still has empty stadium games going on.
The San-São is tomorrow
The axe murderer
For I am death and I ride on a pale horse
The axe murderer
For I am death and I ride on a pale horse
The axe murderer
For I am death and I ride on a pale horse
Sitting here watching a game in the Indian Super League, and I can’t tell if this is an empty arena match or if they just don’t have any fans 
Long but a good read for football fans
British football suspended amid coronavirus threat, so what happens next?
British football suspended amid coronavirus threat, so what happens next?
Right, that’s that, then. Definitely no elite football in Britain for a fortnight (and nobody believes it will only be a two-week break).
The speed with which all of this has hit us feels unprecedented. Historians will no doubt be able to find examples from the past but right now that perspective is beyond most of us — it is certainly beyond the club bosses and football leaders The Athletic has spoken to over the last week, for them these are the “interesting times” of the apocryphal Chinese curse and nobody wants to be living through them.
Earlier this week we published a question-and-answer piece on the coronavirus outbreak that was considerably more question than answer. The good news is the number of answers has grown. The bad news is so have the questions.
So here is an attempt to summarise the things we know we know, outline the things we know we do not know and explore some of the things we don’t know we don’t know.
Known knowns: Premier League suspended and Euro 2020 off until next summer
On Friday morning, the English Football League, Football Association and Premier League bowed to the inevitable and suspended the professional game, men’s and women’s, in England until April 3. Within the hour, the Scottish football authorities followed suit, also suspending grassroots football.
These announcements came soon after European football’s governing body UEFA had announced it was postponing all of next week’s Champions League and Europa League fixtures.
By halting the season, the British game is now in line with almost every major sports league and event around the world. An earlier determination to proceed behind closed doors — a stance backed by the UK government — quickly became unsustainable when managers and players started to test positive for COVID-19.
At the time of writing, seven of the 20 Premier League clubs have players or staff in self-isolation because they have either tested positive for the coronavirus or have come into contact with someone who has. In fact, the Premier League’s position on whether to proceed in closed stadiums or not changed within minutes of Arsenal announcing their head coach Mikel Arteta had contracted the virus.
UEFA had also hoped to plough on — and Manchester United and Wolves were among clubs in Europa League action on Thursday in empty stadiums, while Rangers played Bayer Leverkusen at a packed Ibrox — but with similar stories of contagion within dressing rooms and at training grounds across the continent, there was no option but to pause. You can play games without fans but you cannot play games without players.
The next big call will come on Tuesday, when UEFA hosts a video conference with its 55 member associations, the European Club Association, European Leagues and players’ union FIFPro to discuss a collective response to COVID-19.
The reality, however, is the main decisions will be reached by working groups long before anyone dials in and The Athletic understands the biggest of all, to postpone Euro 2020 until next summer has already, very reluctantly, been made.
This is because it is now accepted the disruption to the domestic and international calendars will continue beyond April, with public health experts predicting the pandemic’s peak in Europe to come in late May/early June, with some countries further along the curve than others.
As a result, it is almost impossible to believe the domestic seasons will be wrapping up in May — the last club game in England is the Championship play-off scheduled for May 25, the last game of the current European club season is the Champions League final scheduled for May 30.
Italy, for example, with 15,000 cases and counting, has the highest number of reported cases outside China, where the outbreak started only three months ago. France, Germany and Spain, on the other hand, are approaching 3,000 cases, but the UK’s number is still under 1,000. The experts, however, believe we are simply at different points on the same timeline, and you can also multiply all of those numbers by 10 right now to work out how many cases you really have, as opposed to just the ones you know about.
Euro 2020 is scheduled to start in Rome on June 12. Serie A started cancelling games two weeks ago — another indication the UK is just a fortnight behind Italy — and all sport in that country was suspended until April 3 on Monday. But with Italy in lockdown, the health system under enormous strain and clubs self-isolating, the country will not be able to start playing football again for at least a month, probably longer.
The football authorities there have already revealed they are considering three options: declare the season null and void and start again in August; end the season now, dishing out the prizes, promotions and relegations on the basis of the current tables; or wait for the worst of the outbreak to pass and start playing again as soon as possible, perhaps with a series of play-offs to decide this season’s winners and losers.
In Italy, this boils down to arguments about whether it is fair to hand Juventus a ninth straight title on the basis of a one-point lead over Lazio with 12 games left not played, or relegate Lecce, despite them being only three points behind Udinese, who are five places above them.
This debate is just starting in England but consensus is to wait and see, with the vast majority of clubs keen to complete the domestic fixture list, even if that means playing until July.
The only thing currently stopping that — apart from a much graver health crisis than currently predicted — is Euro 2020. UEFA knows that and will move it. The Athletic has heard that the tournament’s suppliers have already been told to stop preparing for the tournament this summer and start thinking about how and when it can be squeezed in next summer.
Known unknowns: can clubs survive without match-day revenue? Who goes up and down? What about player contracts?
This is where we move into the heart of the conversations, debates and meltdowns that are currently taking place at clubs, governing bodies and leagues across the globe.
It is assumed, but not known, the situation will get better as the weather improves, the seasonal burden on our hospitals passes and some level of group immunity develops.
When, though?
And if the peak is still 12 weeks away, are we going to play on and accept that some players will be absent while recovering from illness? Will fans be allowed at games? If not, are we going to broadcast or stream all games live? Are we going to let fans watch these games in pubs? And what are we going to do for the dozens of British clubs that live from home game to home game?
Match-day revenues only account for about a seventh of Premier League clubs’ total income, with more than half coming from broadcasters. Playing games without fans would be far from ideal but it would not bankrupt them. After all, they have about £1 billion in cash in the bank between them.
That, however, is not the case further down the league pyramid. For clubs without parachute payments in the Championship, match-day income is about a third of their total pot, rising to a half in Leagues One and Two. It is a similar story north of the border, where most Scottish Premiership clubs earn a third of their annual revenue from home matches but match-day revenues accounted for a remarkable 60 per cent of Rangers’ 2018-19 income.
It is only seven months ago that Bury became the first club to crash out of the EFL for financial reasons since 1992. Bolton nearly joined them. Since then, Derby County, Macclesfield Town, Oldham Athletic and Southend United have all been late in paying their players and there are several more right on the edge.
The Athletic has spoken to sources at several EFL clubs over the last 24 hours and they have described the prospect of going behind closed doors or having no games until next season as “catastrophic”, “disastrous” or “unimaginable”.
For example, League One’s Southend believe losing the five home games they have left, which include visits from the two biggest away followings in the division, Portsmouth and Sunderland, would cost them nearly £450,000 in ticket sales. Add the prospect of having to refund season card-holders and hospitality packages, and the cash-strapped Essex side, already facing a winding-up petition for unpaid tax, are looking at a £750,000 hit.
Other clubs in League One and League Two have put a figure of more like £250,000 on it but this is based on the premise most fans and local sponsors will not demand their money back, as doing so might mean there is no club to support next season. It is hoped those supporters will accept a free pass to watch the games on the EFL’s iFollow streaming service but that, again, assumes there will be games to stream.
The EFL has some reserves but not enough to pay hundreds of players’ wages until next season. The league has raised this with the UK government but it knows there will be a long queue for aid in the coming months and the Treasury cannot show any favouritism, particularly to an industry widely perceived to have more than enough money of its own, albeit not very well distributed.
The Scottish Professional Football League has also announced there is no rainy-day fund to help its clubs, saying “every single penny of income from sponsorships, broadcast deals and cup revenue is already paid to the clubs as fees”. Its chief executive Neil Doncaster has grimly added there will be “dire consequences” to an extended shutdown.
All told, this means clubs are facing a desperate scramble to cut costs, check their insurance policies and work out if they are eligible for one of the emergency loans British chancellor Rishi Sunak announced in his coronavirus budget on Wednesday. He also suggested solvent firms with temporary cashflow issues might be allowed to defer tax bills for a period of time; whether that gets Southend off the hook is another matter.
Most British clubs are insured against “force majeure” events that prevent them from playing games and there is a glimmer of good news here in that, last week, the government added COVID-19 to the list of “notifiable diseases” insurers are expected to pay out for. But level of cover across football varies widely and The Athletic has been told there is widespread concern about how much money clubs can realistically expect from insurers.
You can also be sure these companies will be getting their money back in increased premiums next year or simply refusing to cover coronavirus outbreaks in the future.
So the clubs are poring through every contract they have, looking for ways then can cut costs or postpone bills, and this includes the agreements they have with their players. The vast majority of players’ contracts have an end-date of June 30, as do loan agreements.
As stated above, the consensus is to pause but then do everything possible to finish this season, which means playing into June and possibly beyond.
Would you continue playing games without a contract? Will parent clubs let their players finish seasons with host clubs without legal protections in place? And will clubs be allowed to register free agents to cover absent players after the usual end-of-March cut-off date?
When clubs are not fielding calls from journalists right now, they are answering inquiries from agents.
But answering those is easy compared to the massive question that hangs over everything: what if the situation is no better, or even worse, in a month’s time? In fact, at the meeting between Premier League clubs on Friday, the FA chairman Greg Clarke said that he did not think it is “feasible” that the season will be completed.
Handing Liverpool the title on the basis of three quarters of a season will no doubt annoy fans of Everton and the two Manchester clubs but what do you do about the European places? Arsenal, in ninth, are eight points behind Chelsea in fourth, with a game in hand, and Manchester United are only three points behind Chelsea. It is hard to see either of these clubs — or Sheffield United or Wolves — saying they are willing to call time on this season just yet.
And that is before you consider relegation from the Premier League, where the bottom six are separated by eight points, or promotion from the Championship, where 13th-placed Queen Park Rangers are only six points behind Preston North End in the last play-off spot, sixth. And so on and so on. If you can’t finish the season, how do you decide who goes up and down? And would any decision bring endless lawsuits?
Of course, the alternative is to pretend this season never happened, that Liverpool did not win 18 league games in a row and are only a victory at Manchester City away from mathematically sealing the deal, that Marcelo Bielsa’s Leeds have not just won five straight and are now top of the Championship with nine to play, that Atalanta, Atletico Madrid, RB Leipzig and Paris Saint-Germain have just reached the Champions League’s last eight.
By all means, let’s pretend, all the way to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
The speed with which all of this has hit us feels unprecedented. Historians will no doubt be able to find examples from the past but right now that perspective is beyond most of us — it is certainly beyond the club bosses and football leaders The Athletic has spoken to over the last week, for them these are the “interesting times” of the apocryphal Chinese curse and nobody wants to be living through them.
Earlier this week we published a question-and-answer piece on the coronavirus outbreak that was considerably more question than answer. The good news is the number of answers has grown. The bad news is so have the questions.
So here is an attempt to summarise the things we know we know, outline the things we know we do not know and explore some of the things we don’t know we don’t know.
Known knowns: Premier League suspended and Euro 2020 off until next summer
On Friday morning, the English Football League, Football Association and Premier League bowed to the inevitable and suspended the professional game, men’s and women’s, in England until April 3. Within the hour, the Scottish football authorities followed suit, also suspending grassroots football.
These announcements came soon after European football’s governing body UEFA had announced it was postponing all of next week’s Champions League and Europa League fixtures.
By halting the season, the British game is now in line with almost every major sports league and event around the world. An earlier determination to proceed behind closed doors — a stance backed by the UK government — quickly became unsustainable when managers and players started to test positive for COVID-19.
At the time of writing, seven of the 20 Premier League clubs have players or staff in self-isolation because they have either tested positive for the coronavirus or have come into contact with someone who has. In fact, the Premier League’s position on whether to proceed in closed stadiums or not changed within minutes of Arsenal announcing their head coach Mikel Arteta had contracted the virus.
UEFA had also hoped to plough on — and Manchester United and Wolves were among clubs in Europa League action on Thursday in empty stadiums, while Rangers played Bayer Leverkusen at a packed Ibrox — but with similar stories of contagion within dressing rooms and at training grounds across the continent, there was no option but to pause. You can play games without fans but you cannot play games without players.
The next big call will come on Tuesday, when UEFA hosts a video conference with its 55 member associations, the European Club Association, European Leagues and players’ union FIFPro to discuss a collective response to COVID-19.
The reality, however, is the main decisions will be reached by working groups long before anyone dials in and The Athletic understands the biggest of all, to postpone Euro 2020 until next summer has already, very reluctantly, been made.
This is because it is now accepted the disruption to the domestic and international calendars will continue beyond April, with public health experts predicting the pandemic’s peak in Europe to come in late May/early June, with some countries further along the curve than others.
As a result, it is almost impossible to believe the domestic seasons will be wrapping up in May — the last club game in England is the Championship play-off scheduled for May 25, the last game of the current European club season is the Champions League final scheduled for May 30.
Italy, for example, with 15,000 cases and counting, has the highest number of reported cases outside China, where the outbreak started only three months ago. France, Germany and Spain, on the other hand, are approaching 3,000 cases, but the UK’s number is still under 1,000. The experts, however, believe we are simply at different points on the same timeline, and you can also multiply all of those numbers by 10 right now to work out how many cases you really have, as opposed to just the ones you know about.
Euro 2020 is scheduled to start in Rome on June 12. Serie A started cancelling games two weeks ago — another indication the UK is just a fortnight behind Italy — and all sport in that country was suspended until April 3 on Monday. But with Italy in lockdown, the health system under enormous strain and clubs self-isolating, the country will not be able to start playing football again for at least a month, probably longer.
The football authorities there have already revealed they are considering three options: declare the season null and void and start again in August; end the season now, dishing out the prizes, promotions and relegations on the basis of the current tables; or wait for the worst of the outbreak to pass and start playing again as soon as possible, perhaps with a series of play-offs to decide this season’s winners and losers.
In Italy, this boils down to arguments about whether it is fair to hand Juventus a ninth straight title on the basis of a one-point lead over Lazio with 12 games left not played, or relegate Lecce, despite them being only three points behind Udinese, who are five places above them.
This debate is just starting in England but consensus is to wait and see, with the vast majority of clubs keen to complete the domestic fixture list, even if that means playing until July.
The only thing currently stopping that — apart from a much graver health crisis than currently predicted — is Euro 2020. UEFA knows that and will move it. The Athletic has heard that the tournament’s suppliers have already been told to stop preparing for the tournament this summer and start thinking about how and when it can be squeezed in next summer.
Known unknowns: can clubs survive without match-day revenue? Who goes up and down? What about player contracts?
This is where we move into the heart of the conversations, debates and meltdowns that are currently taking place at clubs, governing bodies and leagues across the globe.
It is assumed, but not known, the situation will get better as the weather improves, the seasonal burden on our hospitals passes and some level of group immunity develops.
When, though?
And if the peak is still 12 weeks away, are we going to play on and accept that some players will be absent while recovering from illness? Will fans be allowed at games? If not, are we going to broadcast or stream all games live? Are we going to let fans watch these games in pubs? And what are we going to do for the dozens of British clubs that live from home game to home game?
Match-day revenues only account for about a seventh of Premier League clubs’ total income, with more than half coming from broadcasters. Playing games without fans would be far from ideal but it would not bankrupt them. After all, they have about £1 billion in cash in the bank between them.
That, however, is not the case further down the league pyramid. For clubs without parachute payments in the Championship, match-day income is about a third of their total pot, rising to a half in Leagues One and Two. It is a similar story north of the border, where most Scottish Premiership clubs earn a third of their annual revenue from home matches but match-day revenues accounted for a remarkable 60 per cent of Rangers’ 2018-19 income.
It is only seven months ago that Bury became the first club to crash out of the EFL for financial reasons since 1992. Bolton nearly joined them. Since then, Derby County, Macclesfield Town, Oldham Athletic and Southend United have all been late in paying their players and there are several more right on the edge.
The Athletic has spoken to sources at several EFL clubs over the last 24 hours and they have described the prospect of going behind closed doors or having no games until next season as “catastrophic”, “disastrous” or “unimaginable”.
For example, League One’s Southend believe losing the five home games they have left, which include visits from the two biggest away followings in the division, Portsmouth and Sunderland, would cost them nearly £450,000 in ticket sales. Add the prospect of having to refund season card-holders and hospitality packages, and the cash-strapped Essex side, already facing a winding-up petition for unpaid tax, are looking at a £750,000 hit.
Other clubs in League One and League Two have put a figure of more like £250,000 on it but this is based on the premise most fans and local sponsors will not demand their money back, as doing so might mean there is no club to support next season. It is hoped those supporters will accept a free pass to watch the games on the EFL’s iFollow streaming service but that, again, assumes there will be games to stream.
The EFL has some reserves but not enough to pay hundreds of players’ wages until next season. The league has raised this with the UK government but it knows there will be a long queue for aid in the coming months and the Treasury cannot show any favouritism, particularly to an industry widely perceived to have more than enough money of its own, albeit not very well distributed.
The Scottish Professional Football League has also announced there is no rainy-day fund to help its clubs, saying “every single penny of income from sponsorships, broadcast deals and cup revenue is already paid to the clubs as fees”. Its chief executive Neil Doncaster has grimly added there will be “dire consequences” to an extended shutdown.
All told, this means clubs are facing a desperate scramble to cut costs, check their insurance policies and work out if they are eligible for one of the emergency loans British chancellor Rishi Sunak announced in his coronavirus budget on Wednesday. He also suggested solvent firms with temporary cashflow issues might be allowed to defer tax bills for a period of time; whether that gets Southend off the hook is another matter.
Most British clubs are insured against “force majeure” events that prevent them from playing games and there is a glimmer of good news here in that, last week, the government added COVID-19 to the list of “notifiable diseases” insurers are expected to pay out for. But level of cover across football varies widely and The Athletic has been told there is widespread concern about how much money clubs can realistically expect from insurers.
You can also be sure these companies will be getting their money back in increased premiums next year or simply refusing to cover coronavirus outbreaks in the future.
So the clubs are poring through every contract they have, looking for ways then can cut costs or postpone bills, and this includes the agreements they have with their players. The vast majority of players’ contracts have an end-date of June 30, as do loan agreements.
As stated above, the consensus is to pause but then do everything possible to finish this season, which means playing into June and possibly beyond.
Would you continue playing games without a contract? Will parent clubs let their players finish seasons with host clubs without legal protections in place? And will clubs be allowed to register free agents to cover absent players after the usual end-of-March cut-off date?
When clubs are not fielding calls from journalists right now, they are answering inquiries from agents.
But answering those is easy compared to the massive question that hangs over everything: what if the situation is no better, or even worse, in a month’s time? In fact, at the meeting between Premier League clubs on Friday, the FA chairman Greg Clarke said that he did not think it is “feasible” that the season will be completed.
Handing Liverpool the title on the basis of three quarters of a season will no doubt annoy fans of Everton and the two Manchester clubs but what do you do about the European places? Arsenal, in ninth, are eight points behind Chelsea in fourth, with a game in hand, and Manchester United are only three points behind Chelsea. It is hard to see either of these clubs — or Sheffield United or Wolves — saying they are willing to call time on this season just yet.
And that is before you consider relegation from the Premier League, where the bottom six are separated by eight points, or promotion from the Championship, where 13th-placed Queen Park Rangers are only six points behind Preston North End in the last play-off spot, sixth. And so on and so on. If you can’t finish the season, how do you decide who goes up and down? And would any decision bring endless lawsuits?
Of course, the alternative is to pretend this season never happened, that Liverpool did not win 18 league games in a row and are only a victory at Manchester City away from mathematically sealing the deal, that Marcelo Bielsa’s Leeds have not just won five straight and are now top of the Championship with nine to play, that Atalanta, Atletico Madrid, RB Leipzig and Paris Saint-Germain have just reached the Champions League’s last eight.
By all means, let’s pretend, all the way to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
part 2
Unknown unknowns: the clubs awaiting punishment and where will the Olympics land?
OK, now we move into “there is no such thing as a silly question” territory, or fantasy football.
Actually, while we are on that topic, the Fantasy Premier League has just issued a statement to say managers will earn zero points for the postponed Gameweeks 30 and 31 but the intention is to return for Gameweek 32, “subject to medical advice and conditions at the time”. Furthermore, any manager who has made transfers or played their wildcard or free hit chips this week, too bad. There has been no comment so far from the Football Pools Panel, which could be busy in the coming weeks.
The situation is moving so fast right now, in such unusual directions, it is impossible to predict where we are heading or when we will get there.
Moving Euro 2020 clearly solves the problem of the hard end-of-May deadline but it creates havoc next summer, not to mention when we might be able to start next season.
Currently scheduled for summer 2021, we have the finals of Europe’s second Nations League competition in early June, World Cup qualifiers for Qatar 2022 across the globe, the CONCACAF Gold Cup, FIFA’s first 24-team Club World Cup and the Women’s Euro 2021.
If UEFA has to move Euro 2020, and it knows it does, it could probably live without the Nations League, if it had to, but it would be very reluctant to steal the thunder from its own women’s tournament which runs from July 11 to August 1 next year.
Likewise, if FIFA wants to do its bit, it would probably agree to postpone the start of its new and improved Club World Cup, giving it more time to sell the competition to the European elite clubs it wants to see there, but it would not want to risk any more disruption to the 2022 World Cup, so keeping the qualification process on track would be a red line.
But Euro 2020 was already a bit of a pain in the behind before anybody had heard of the coronavirus, social distancing or super carriers, as former UEFA boss Michel Platini had decided to mark its 60th anniversary by “sharing it” around the continent. So instead of it being staged in one or two countries, its 51 games are scheduled to be played in 12 different countries, which means you are multiplying the potential clashes with other events.
And when you talk about clashes, there is the mother of all sporting schedule snafus to consider: what happens if Tokyo 2020 becomes Tokyo 2021. This summer’s Olympics are scheduled to start on July 24 and, according to the World Health Organisation, Japan has the 10th highest number of coronavirus cases in the world.
So far, the International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach is taking a leaf out of the same book the Jockey Club and National League have been consulting this week and deciding to keep on keeping on, but that position will become untenable if the pandemic continues to spread for another month or so. As ever with Olympic sport, much will depend on the appetite in the US for three weekends of elite but niche sporting endeavour this summer.
If the Olympics move, nobody will want to be anywhere near its shadow in 2021.
What happens now with Manchester City’s financial fair play dispute with UEFA? What about the EFL’s various disciplinary cases with Derby, Macclesfield, Sheffield Wednesday and Southend? Will BT or Sky Sports start refunding customers for missing games? Will the new Brentford and AFC Wimbledon stadiums get held up?
And what if COVID-19 mutates and becomes COVID-20 or COVID-21?
You’re right there are some unknowns it is better not to know.
While writing this piece, golf’s Masters, the London Marathon and two Formula 1 races have been postponed, the World Health Organisation has said Europe is now “the epicentre of the epidemic” and the global death toll went past 5,000.
Last weekend we were laughing about the Premier League telling players not to do the pre-match handshake but forgetting to remind them not to hug each other when they score. Let us look forward to such old-fashioned nonsense again, this serious stuff is a bit scary.
OK, now we move into “there is no such thing as a silly question” territory, or fantasy football.
Actually, while we are on that topic, the Fantasy Premier League has just issued a statement to say managers will earn zero points for the postponed Gameweeks 30 and 31 but the intention is to return for Gameweek 32, “subject to medical advice and conditions at the time”. Furthermore, any manager who has made transfers or played their wildcard or free hit chips this week, too bad. There has been no comment so far from the Football Pools Panel, which could be busy in the coming weeks.
The situation is moving so fast right now, in such unusual directions, it is impossible to predict where we are heading or when we will get there.
Moving Euro 2020 clearly solves the problem of the hard end-of-May deadline but it creates havoc next summer, not to mention when we might be able to start next season.
Currently scheduled for summer 2021, we have the finals of Europe’s second Nations League competition in early June, World Cup qualifiers for Qatar 2022 across the globe, the CONCACAF Gold Cup, FIFA’s first 24-team Club World Cup and the Women’s Euro 2021.
If UEFA has to move Euro 2020, and it knows it does, it could probably live without the Nations League, if it had to, but it would be very reluctant to steal the thunder from its own women’s tournament which runs from July 11 to August 1 next year.
Likewise, if FIFA wants to do its bit, it would probably agree to postpone the start of its new and improved Club World Cup, giving it more time to sell the competition to the European elite clubs it wants to see there, but it would not want to risk any more disruption to the 2022 World Cup, so keeping the qualification process on track would be a red line.
But Euro 2020 was already a bit of a pain in the behind before anybody had heard of the coronavirus, social distancing or super carriers, as former UEFA boss Michel Platini had decided to mark its 60th anniversary by “sharing it” around the continent. So instead of it being staged in one or two countries, its 51 games are scheduled to be played in 12 different countries, which means you are multiplying the potential clashes with other events.
And when you talk about clashes, there is the mother of all sporting schedule snafus to consider: what happens if Tokyo 2020 becomes Tokyo 2021. This summer’s Olympics are scheduled to start on July 24 and, according to the World Health Organisation, Japan has the 10th highest number of coronavirus cases in the world.
So far, the International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach is taking a leaf out of the same book the Jockey Club and National League have been consulting this week and deciding to keep on keeping on, but that position will become untenable if the pandemic continues to spread for another month or so. As ever with Olympic sport, much will depend on the appetite in the US for three weekends of elite but niche sporting endeavour this summer.
If the Olympics move, nobody will want to be anywhere near its shadow in 2021.
What happens now with Manchester City’s financial fair play dispute with UEFA? What about the EFL’s various disciplinary cases with Derby, Macclesfield, Sheffield Wednesday and Southend? Will BT or Sky Sports start refunding customers for missing games? Will the new Brentford and AFC Wimbledon stadiums get held up?
And what if COVID-19 mutates and becomes COVID-20 or COVID-21?
You’re right there are some unknowns it is better not to know.
While writing this piece, golf’s Masters, the London Marathon and two Formula 1 races have been postponed, the World Health Organisation has said Europe is now “the epicentre of the epidemic” and the global death toll went past 5,000.
Last weekend we were laughing about the Premier League telling players not to do the pre-match handshake but forgetting to remind them not to hug each other when they score. Let us look forward to such old-fashioned nonsense again, this serious stuff is a bit scary.
1970s HeRon Flow
Takin Penitentiary Chances
Still got Liga MXSitting here watching a game in the Indian Super League, and I can’t tell if this is an empty arena match or if they just don’t have any fans
