HOW, amid the chaos and the confusion, can we even begin to talk about football? It was only last Friday when football was abandoned.
By Monday, as it became clear that this crisis could go on for a year and that even in the most optimistic projections it will not reach its peak for another three months, all those takes insisting the season must be abandoned or confidently asserting how the summer could be used to finish various tournaments looked spectacularly premature. And, given the severity of the crisis, given estimates of perhaps half a million dead in the UK alone, trite.
The old habits are ingrained. It’s easy to lapse into familiar patterns of thought. What would this mean for Liverpool? Who do Manchester City need to sign? But it’s all irrelevant. Until the full severity of the crisis is understood, until there is some firm evidence of when it may be possible to start playing football again, speculating about what any of it may mean or how any of it may be resolved makes no sense.
What is clear is that there is a will on the part of the authorities, if at all possible, to complete the 2019-20 season. That is as it should be, both from a point of view of basic sporting integrity and the avoidance of lawsuits. Imagine how aggrieved Leeds or West Bromwich Albion would be were the season simply to be ended now, to be denied not just promotion but Premier League revenues for however many years they can retain their top-flight status. Imagine how Liverpool would feel, having dropped just five points in 29 games this season, to find that that still wasn’t enough to end their 30-year title drought
Fair and reasonable?
Do you agree with Karren Brady? pic.twitter.com/Z20DwIT6CI
— ESPN UK (@ESPNUK) March 14, 2020
A little speculation is unavoidable. If the remaining nine to ten league games can be played in June or July, all well and good. If it is later than that, then it may be that the start of next season would have to be postponed, or that season perhaps reduced in scope, whether through the suspension of the Carabao Cup and, perhaps, by playing what would effectively be a half season, each team playing each of the others only once.
Or perhaps some form of playoff could be introduced, agonising, fraught affairs to determine who goes up and who goes down. Liverpool, at least, are far enough ahead that nobody could seriously protest if they were just awarded the title, glumly anticlimactic as that would feel. Or maybe the best solution is that suggested in Italy of abandoning 2020-21 altogether to create space to complete 2019-20 – perhaps with an FA Cup tournament if time allows.
But even with those suggestions there are major issues. If competitions were reduced or suspended, sponsors and television rights holders would have to be compensated. If there are fewer games, there are fewer opportunities for clubs to generate the revenue they require to pay players. And that is the biggest sticking point, given that contracts expire on June 30. It presumably wouldn’t be difficult to introduce emergency legislation to extend all deals set to expire in June by six months, but clubs may not be able to afford them.
And then there’s the international dimension. What may be possible in England may not necessarily also be possible in France or Italy or Spain. Part of Uefa’s job over the next few months will be to try to liaise between the various leagues to try to ensure at least some sort of uniformity of approach. It helps nobody if we reach Christmas and the Premier League are still finishing off 2019-20 while elsewhere 2020-21 is halfway done.
But for now, none of it matters much. Whether Liverpool end up winning the title or being awarded it or find it snatched from them at the last, they have spent three-quarters of the season playing brilliant football that will not be forgotten. Even in their exit from the Champions League they were excellent.
There will be those in the future who use whatever exigencies come into effect to bait rivals, but if the weekend just gone has taught us anything, it is how much football, just the awareness of it going on, matters, how bereft we feel when it isn’t there. And that feeling, hopefully, is what will prevail, a recognition that the game itself, the sense of community, is worth far more than the petty tribalism that characterises so much of the conversations about it.
