CLOSING FOOTBALL’S DOORS IS THE ONLY OPTION
Fans. Where would football be without them? We are about to find out. Close the doors. It is the only available option. Postponement, play-offs, ending the season now, none of it works, none of it would be fair.
not every team is like Liverpool, in a position to claim moral victory as champions less than two weeks into March. Issues of promotion and relegation are less clear. and there is no time in football’s overcrowded schedule for delay.
If the European Championship goes ahead — and while the wider world may be sceptical, UEFa insist it will — the time between the conclusion of the domestic football season and the agreed date for players to be released for international duty is measured in days more than weeks. no solution is ideal, but some are simply unworkable. Football closes its doors or 2019-20 is declared void.
‘ Does football work without spectators?’ asked Pep Guardiola, before the hurried postponement of Manchester City’s match with arsenal. ‘We do our job for the people and if the people cannot come to watch us, there is no sense. I would not love to play in the Premier League or Champions League or the cups without people.’
Well, yes and no. The commercial plan of every elite club, including City, aggressively targets a great many who will never set foot inside the Etihad, or any English football stadium. They consume the Premier League through television subscriptions in countries across the world, and we are conditioned to believe they are no less important than those who stand in the rain for their club every week.
so let’s not pretend football is all about the hardy souls who go to it. Often, they are the last to be considered in everything from fixture scheduling to VaR replays. Who are the least informed people when the ball goes in the net these days? Those inside the stadium. Who are repeatedly inconvenienced by kick-off times and dates shifted with no consideration for the journeys undertaken? The travelling fans. and none of that is Guardiola’s fault. But let’s not pretend that the people are prioritised by his, or any other, sport.
so once we have accepted that sacrifices will have to be made to deal with an unexpected but very real threat, playing before television cameras in an otherwise empty stadium is by some distance the least worst option.
Look at the alternatives. To the cynic it almost seems as if the Premier League is trying to limp on until Liverpool are officially crowned champions, which may be less than two weeks away, and that would settle the primary issue.
Yet a football season is about so much more than who comes first. It is simply not an option to freeze the leagues on the date government decides large public assembly is too risky, and regard those standings as the final word.
Had that been done after 28 games last season, Liverpool would have won the title and arsenal, not Chelsea, would have qualified for the Champions League. and how could it be adequately explained to the clubs in the bottom three that their fate has been sealed at some midway moment?
Bournemouth would go down on the same points as Watford and West Ham, with nine matches to correct that unresolved. aston Villa would be relegated without playing the game in hand that could lift them to 16th.
One option would be to have no relegation — but then how would that sit with Leeds, at last anticipating their return to the Premier League, or those clubs scrapping it out for play-off places throughout football’s pyramid? These are exceptional circumstances, but we cannot make them worse with random unfairness.
Play-offs? How, and who? should Liverpool start off level against a club they currently lead by 25 points? and how far should these knockout games stretch, considering arsenal, in ninth, still hold ambitious hopes of securing a Champions League place?
Who would feature in relegation play-offs? are southampton safe, seven points above the bottom three with nine games to play, or do we draw an arbitrary line at, say, a bottom four, so that Watford are in, but West Ham are saved with a superior goal difference of two? Play- offs are another arbitrary solution that dissolves on analysis. They would require complex legislation, conjured on the hoof.
Guardiola, and others, favour postponement, but this presumes resumption and nothing can be guaranteed there. Who knows where the European continent will be in two weeks’ time? and then what? Plus, there isn’t room in football’s calendar for any kind of delay, or diversion. The winter break proved that. The odd Fa Cup replay and the whole process spun off into chaos as a third of the top division ended up reneging on their pledge to take a rest.
speaking with Roberto Martinez, manager of Belgium, on the way back from Leipzig yesterday the absence of wriggle room became clear. The guidance from UEFa is that the European Championship will go ahead, perhaps behind closed doors, meaning countries will get first call once the Champions League final has been played on May 30.
THE Premier League ends on May 17, so even a hiatus of two weeks would impact on that with players having no break at all, or truncated time with the national squad. and many European leagues finish later than here.
This isn’t a movable feast. Guardiola’s proposal — and nuno Espirito santo of Wolves echoed it — would create a logistical nightmare given football’s obligations on multiple fronts. and that is if the crisis has passed by May, which seems unlikely.
so playing the season to empty stands in soulless, echoing arenas is the best of it, sadly. and, yes, thousands may gather outside, or in pubs and clubs, because humans are social creatures and like to share experience, but then it is the job of government and medical practitioners to educate. If people are informed and that information is consistent, they can be steered towards smarter decisions. Yes, it would be a thrill to be in the vicinity when Liverpool finally lift the Premier League trophy — but is it worth killing Granny?
Equally, we are warned that many small clubs would struggle without gate revenue. Yet this is where Premier League largesse should come to the rescue. not to save basket-case businesses like Bury, but to keep those clubs afloat who cannot possibly have been expected to prepare for this day. Emergency funds and empathy are
not beyond football’s wealthiest, surely? For how long? That’s the crux of it: nobody knows. Nobody knows anything, really.
The guidance conflicts, best practice varies. Landing at City Airport from Frankfurt yesterday, the whole plane had to fill in forms to aid location in the event of a fellow passenger developing coronavirus. Yet there was only space to record one set of flight details. What of those whose journey began elsewhere, connecting through Frankfurt? It seemed to be window-dressing, not a plan. Then it was on to a train north. The chap sitting across the table of four had a persistent cough. It was too crowded, and we were all too polite to question him on it, but were there passenger locator forms, just in case? Not a chance. No consistency.
And if thousands in a stadium are a risk, what of those tightly-packed coaches that shuttle passengers out to remote parking locations for their aircraft at busy hubs? Anyone flying Leipzig-Frankfurt-London City yesterday had been herded on to three of them before 8am. And why did Avanti, newly operating the west coast rail franchise and already making travellers miss Virgin, wait until 12.04pm to announce the platform for the 12.07pm to Liverpool, meaning the London Euston concourse was rammed and then bunched up as travellers hurried to get a seat? It’s all so random.
There were 2,500 Atletico Madrid fans at Anfield last night, who wouldn’t be allowed to attend a match in their native country. Someone is right in their coronavirus protection procedures, and maybe someone else is very, very wrong. Let’s hope it’s not us.