Fixture chaos over virus

Socceroos and Sydney FC facing rescheduling dramas

THE spread of the coronavirus threatens to cause chaos for Australian football, with the Socceroos facing a fixtures pile-up and Sydney FC drawing up contingency plans to play Asian Champions League ties in June.

Asian football chiefs are holding meetings with FIFA this week and are expected to announce that the two sets of World Cup qualifiers due to be played later this month will be postponed.

Though Australia’s games at home to Kuwait (in Perth) and away to Nepal are not at this stage at direct risk from the coronavirus, all Asian qualifiers in March are likely to be postponed to ensure the integrity of the competition.

What is unclear is when the games will be postponed to, with the Socceroos due to play two more qualifiers in June, followed immediately by the Copa America tournament in Colombia and Argentina.

The second round of qualifiers is due to begin in September, but could be pushed back further into 2021 to allow for the outstanding games from March to be played.

That would have a knockon effect through to final qualification for the 2022 World

Cup, though the one saving grace is that the later scheduling of that tournament — in November/December rather than June/July — gives space for qualifiers to run late.

However the change of fixtures will cause major headaches for the Socceroos’ coaching staff, with the expectation that Olyroos players would form the bulk of the Copa America squad, as preparation for the Tokyo Games

— if Australia has secured passage to the next round of World Cup qualifiers by then.

Sydney FC, meanwhile, should learn within a fortnight if any of its ACL games will be put back, after the AFC announced that ties affected by the coronavirus could be played through to the end of June.

A-League players usually go on leave for the whole of June, but Sydney’s away and home fixtures with Shanghai SIPG on April 21 and 29 respectively are under significant doubt.

The burgeoning number of cases of the coronavirus in South Korea could yet endanger Sydney’s trip to Jeonbuk Motors on April 29, and the AFC has promised to publish a definite fixture list by mid-March.

Currently leagues in China, Korea and Japan have all been suspended for now.