Sunday Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Going neutral seems small price to pay for having football back
THE bottom line is no one knows how many Liverpool fans will rock up at Anfield when their team is playing behind closed doors.
Those who see the best in people insist there will be no significant congregation, those who see the worst in people reckon the area around Anfield stadium might get mobbed.
Liverpool Football Club – its staff, players, manager, officials and, indeed, supporters – feels affronted, even insulted, by the idea their matches may have to be moved to a neutral venue due to public safety issues.
Those with no affiliation to the champions-elect envisage the local streets being lined, several deep, and Stanley Park becoming a seething mass of celebrating supporters.
The reality is that we just do not know.
The reality is coronavirus has killed around 40,000 people in the United Kingdom – probably many more – and the reality is the North West and Merseyside continue to suffer badly.
That is what we do know at a time when scientists are forming an orderly queue to express fears that lockdown is being eased too quickly.
At my last count, there were four eminent academics voicing their worries about the relaxation, one of whom simply said Covid-19 is “spreading too fast to lift lockdown in England”.
And, as sombre warnings continue to roll in, it is worth remembering the imminent return of professional football remains some sort of risk.
It will be good to see football, but those who still believe the comeback is wrong are probably not in too much of a minority, if a minority at all.
When the Covid-19 daily deaths were over a thousand in April, there is no way Jurgen Klopp and Liverpool would ever have imagined having the chance to complete their title-winning efforts on the field towards the end of June.
It remains remarkable the
Premier League is restarting. And that is why it does not really matter where Liverpool play the games that complete the formalities of their first title in 30 years.
Club owners seem to have won the argument that matches should be played on a home-and-away basis, even though the absence of any spectators means a stadium is instantly converted into an unofficial neutral venue.
But the authorities have identified certain games that could be moved to an officially neutral venue and any match at Anfield in which Liverpool can become champions is on what the Premier League are calling a contingency list.
Presumably, it will be an evolving list. Presumably, Liverpool fans are not being
not IN case you had noticed, it is cricket chance we weather. Any obsession can get past our
League with the Premier bat and get some on ball?
YOU have to admire the determination of Keith Pelley to stage some golf tournaments and the European Tour chief executive is planning six of them in the UK this summer.
The only caveat is that Pelley (left) and Co are dependent on the Government relaxing its two-week quarantine rule for singled out and insulted, but are being highlighted simply because their team has something hugely significant – and emotional – to achieve.
If there is a home game for, say, Aston Villa that could see them relegated, would that be moved to a neutral venue?
The safety advisory groups and police bodies, who will make these decisions, might think the same as a lot of us and reckon nearly all fans, including Liverpool fans, will be sensible and not descend on grounds in numbers. But if
Tour members, who hail from many different countries.
The same applies to Formula One and the British Grand Prix at Silverstone.
With their desire to use elite sport as some sort of moralebooster – or some sort of distraction from the mess they have made of tackling this they don’t, it is not worth getting into a row about.
Moving the odd match or two to a neutral venue would be one small concession in the unlikely project of bringing professional football back to a country that is still in a pandemic’s deadly grip.
Asked about the prospect of securing the title in a neutral venue, Klopp said: “Usually there’s a 50 per cent chance you don’t become champion in your own stadium anyway, so who cares?”
Exactly. No one should care. pandemic – the Government might well oblige.
But how would they justify it? As we are told, day in, day out, the virus does not discriminate.
So, just because you can drive a ball 300 yards or a car at 200mph, it does not mean you can’t catch Covid-19.
PRE-COVID-19 life seems a world away, granted, but does anyone remember the halcyon days when football authorities appeared to seriously care about the women’s game?
The cancellation of the Women’s Super League raised nothing more than a collective shrug among the sport’s power-brokers – hardly even that, to be honest.
Yet how much money would it have taken to get the remaining matches played? It would have been too expensive for the WSL to fund alone, hence the cancellation.
But the women’s Bundesliga has restarted, thanks mainly to subsidies from the men’s game.
Clearly, in Germany, they don’t just pretend to take women’s football seriously.
That Manchester United only formed a professional team a couple of years ago betrays the attitude of some Premier League clubs to the women’s game.
Along with the FA, they had a chance to make a strong statement about the importance of the women’s game… and decided not to take it.
PS: It’s not just the football authorities. The BBC have decided to broadcast the women’s Bundesliga.
Brilliant. It is on BBC Alba, a Scottish-Gaelic language channel that is on air seven hours a day.
Look forward to the commentary.
HAVING been at both the Cheltenham Festival and at Liverpool versus Atletico Madrid, I agree neither should have been staged.
But a week after the festival, I could have still gone to my local for a pint if I had wanted to.
Some people are still banging on about the recklessness of Cheltenham officials for allowing the races to go ahead, yet the Government still sanctioned about eight million pub visits after the last horse had crossed the line at Prestbury Park.
The festival has long had its issues with misuse of the stick, but the beating it continues to get is excessive use of the whip, for sure.