Following an emergency meeting on Friday morning, The Premier League (and WSL and EFL and FA Cup and youth football) seasons have been suspended until at least the weekend of April 4th.
Most agree that it is quite optimistic to expect football to simply resume at that time however. So what happens then? That’s the question that will be discussed at the next Premier League meeting, reportedly coming up next week.
If, by some miracle, football is able to resume three weeks from now, we would only have to make up two weekends of games (and in Chelsea’s case, only one of those would be an actual league game).
There is belief among PL & 20 clubs that if season resumes on April 4, they can complete on May 17 as scheduled, most likely behind closed doors. Games will resume on MD round 32, & then fixtures that have been postponed in interim will be rescheduled
— Sam Wallace (@SamWallaceTel) March 13, 2020
But with the UK government’s chief scientific advisor predicting that the peak of coronavirus cases in Britain is 10-14 weeks away still (so end of May or June timeframe), we may very well be looking at a lengthy delay if not a complete cancelation or annulment of the season. That would open up a whole host of tricky questions with massive legal, financial, and sporting ramifications. But we have plenty of time to talk about those later.
For now, let’s see what the Premier League braintrust decide. UEFA are reportedly considering playing out, once possible, the rest of this year’s Champions League as a single-elimination knockout tournament (fun!) as well as postponing Euro 2020 by a whole year, to 2021. That might give some time for domestic leagues to finish up the season in a more satisfactory way before the actual end of the season as defined by FIFA (and most players’ contracts) on June 30.
Stay tuned. (It’s not like you’ve got anything better to do.)
A key detail in piece too: Uefa will on Tuesday decide whether CL 2019-20 is just postponed or cancelled.
— Miguel Delaney (@MiguelDelaney) March 13, 2020
If postponed, gives leagues chance to sort of domestic issues like CL places, title
If ended, all must be sorted by restarthttps://t.co/g8d14UK3Lx