WHAT SHOULD HAPPEN NEXT? NOTHING AT ALL

CORONAvIRUS presents an unprecedented crisis for sport. It requires the sharpest of intellects, the clearest of minds, leaders with a vision, a plan, prepared to put the collective good of the nation, not just finance, or the game, before all else. So here is what the owners of England’s Premier League clubs should do, when they finally meet on Thursday.

Nothing. Perhaps a little administration and house-keeping. Set the date and format of the next meeting, for instance. Make decisions on funding for the lower leagues. What is considered to be top of the agenda, however, is yet more Corona-madness. The desire for a finite schedule, for an early resolution to a problem that will take years to unwind, is lunacy.

What should be done? Nothing should be done. Nothing needs to be done. Nothing to do with fixture planning, titles or promotion and relegation anyway.

If Premier League executives wish to agree a means of helping lower-league clubs who will obviously fall more quickly on hard times without gate money, that would be a good use of their time. If they wish to debate how much should be available, adopt a formal process of application for clubs in hardship, and a means of assessing each case, that is a meeting worth having.

The rest of it — do Liverpool win the title, should Leeds come up, do we void the season, do we play on even if the hiatus stretches to September? — none of it needs to be called in a rush.

Nobody, not government, not the epidemiologists, and certainly not Karren Brady or Kenny Dalglish, knows what this country will look like in four days, let alone four months. Positions change almost hourly. views are outdated bulletin to bulletin.

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Y the end of yesterday, the UK government had as good as ordered restaurants and bars shut, quarantined anyone over 70, and advised the public to steer clear of all urban centres.

Yet football is going to have a firm handle on its future by Thursday. Good luck.

We are in for the long haul here. We will almost certainly be dealing with coronavirus next winter, too, and for every winter in the foreseeable future. One day we may view it as we do influenza, with a vaccine available annually to those most at risk and what is sadly considered an acceptable toll on human life. The World Health Organisation puts seasonal flu deaths globally between 290,000 in a good year and 650,000 in a bad one. It is not unthinkable that we learn to live with coronavirus that way, too.

So the idea that a decision made in haste will stand the test of even the shortest stretch of time is risible.

That titles can be prematurely awarded as an administrative call, not on the field or in front of fans, or that clubs can be invited from the Championship to the top flight simply because of a frozen moment in time, are products of a society that seeks instant gratification.

We wait, that’s what we do. Wait and see where we are come summer; whether it is possible to complete the season, even behind closed doors. Only when 2019-20 threatens to encroach on 2020-21 do we have a call to make on voiding the campaign.

Baroness Brady was not wrong to say abandonment was a

consideration; she was just premature. Dalglish is not wrong to say Liverpool deserve the title; but that call does not need to be made, even discussed, yet. The one grace football, indeed all sport, has right now is time.

The first big meeting of the week will be held by UEFA and a single significant call is required. If the 2020 European Championship finals are put back — as is likely — then the domestic leagues and Euro club competitions have room to breathe. It is the most logical move and the easiest resolution.

That tournament is selfcontained and has not even begun. It can be played any time the schedule allows between now and 2024, its next edition. Yet there is also talk UEFA will come up with a half-baked plan to get the 2019-20 Champions League and Europa League competitions over the line.

A week-long festival of football in this year’s final locations, Istanbul and Gdansk, is one projected scheme — with two semis and the final being played in the same neutral venues.

How and when? If UEFA knows when the continent will be clear of coronavirus, perhaps they might share that information with the specialists in the field, who have no clue. And the clubs will be clear, too, yes? Which ones, exactly, considering the competition has not progressed beyond the last 16 yet?

As it stands, there are 12 teams still involved in the Champions League. Some, like Chelsea, may view elimination as a matter of time; others, like Napoli and Barcelona, are tightly balanced at 1-1. Certainly, Real Madrid will not see a 2-1 deficit from the first leg against Manchester City as an insurmountable obstacle.

So how do UEFA imagine they will whittle ten down to four in time for this jamboree? Award all uncompleted second-leg ties to the winner of the first leg? Please let me be in the room when that one is explained to Andrea Agnelli, whose Juventus team went down 1-0 at Lyon.

And then what of the quarterfinals? UEFA, like a great many around football, are getting ahead of themselves. Nothing about the Champions League can be, or needs to be, decided just yet.

Least of all the ultimate destination. Turkey is behind much of Europe in the spread of coronavirus, with only 18 cases detected so far but there are 10,300 citizens yet to return from pilgrimages to Islam’s holy sites in Saudi Arabia.

So how can UEFA be certain that just as central Europe is emerging from the worst months of coronavirus, Istanbul will not be peaking? And, if it is not, why would a country that has relatively escaped the havoc in western Europe wish to welcome thousands of people from countries most affected?

The last 15 Champions League finals have been played between teams from just four nations: England, Spain, Italy and Germany. All are presently in crisis. If Turkey has not experienced similarly critical conditions, why would they risk developing them through football tourism?

The fact is there are only two solutions to the end times of the football season: either wait it out and see where we are, or abandon it and start again later in the year, if possible.

Social media is full of brilliant ideas for play-offs and re-imaginings of the remainder of the campaign, but if they were not present in the rule book at the start, they cannot be adopted now.

So here’s the good news: We don’t have to make daft, hasty, irrational calls; we don’t have to establish schedules or return dates — like April 3 — that are now meaningless in our uncertain existence.

Yes, best practice must be established in some areas — the minutiae, such as what to do with those players who are out of contract come the previously anticipated end of the season — but the temptation to formulate some grand plan must be resisted.

Italy are considering splitting Serie A over two seasons; that is how much time we may have on our hands with this disease.

Club owners cannot approach this Thursday’s meeting with a solution that amounts to a shopping trolley full of toilet rolls. As many are discovering, that really is no solution at all.