Recently, The Eredivisie (Dutch Football League) Board announced that the current season (2019-20) will be scrapped. They also added the current standings will also be considered for UEFA Champions League and UEFA Europa League qualifications but there will be no champion of the league and there won’t be any promotion and relegation this time.
Even the French Prime Minister has called off all sporting actions till September raising questions over the future of the current season of Ligue 1 (French Football League). The Belgian Federation is conducting a polling system to decide whether to cancel the remaining matchez of the league and declare Club Brugge as champions with eleven games remaining. These have raised a few eyebrows and will leave many fans who are quite optimistic of the restart of the footballing action, shocked and disappointed. The Euro Cup, COPA America and the Olympics along with many other sporting events have already been postponed to the summer of 2021 and with these decisions regarding the Dutch and the French league a big question on the future of football in Europe has been raised.
In this article I will be dealing with the questions like what are the chances and possibilities of the footballing action in the next few months and under what circumstances or scenarios the leagues can move forward. We will try to go league by league and talk about the current scenarios and the speculations going around.
Premier League
The Premier League has been suspended indefinitely. The UK Lockdown is right now scheduled to end on 7th May. There were 92 games to be played in the league with almost every team to play 9 each. There was a meeting held between the PL Clubs wherein it was decided that the remaining fixtures of the league becomes their top most priority. However the English Football authorities have also said that the action will only be resumed when it is safe and appropriate to do so. Liverpool are leading the current standings with 25 points gap from second placed Manchester City, whereas there are also teams like Bournemouth who are in the relegation zone just by goal difference. There have been a lot of calculations and mathematical tools which are being used by the people in order to get a result of the Premier League. However, the PL officials have denied all other alternatives that have been trending on social media for the last few weeks.
La Liga
The Spanish Football was initially scheduled to restart from the end of May with training scheduled from the first week of the same. These plans had to be scrapped as the lockdown in the country has been extended till 9th May. The La Liga chief in his latest press conference gave three possible dates for the season to resume. Talking about the current situation in the league standings, the two giants, Barcelona and Real Madrid are just separated by two points with Barcelona leading the front. It looks a bit tricky at the bottom too as only 2 points distinguish between the 16th and 18th position teams. Even if the games resume, it is believed to be held behind closed doors. However, the Spanish Football Federation has proposed to use the current standings to be used for UEFA qualifications.
Serie A
There have been reports that there are seven clubs who are opposing the resumption of the league with Torino the latest one to join. Italy is scheduled to end its country lockdown on 4th May. However, The Serie A board looks confident of resumption of the league in late May or early June. Even the Italian government has allowed individual training of players, they say that it can be started after the lockdown while the team training can resume from May 18. The current Serie A table is the spiciest of all as Juventus and Lazio are just one point apart. They will be looking to play at their best and win the league title once it resumes.
Ligue 1
The current season of Ligue 1 will not resume as the French Prime Minister has suspended all sporting actions in the country till September. However, the decision of scrapping the season and its relegations and promotions are some of the key decisions yet to be made. It even puts up a pressure on UEFA who are planning to conclude their Champions League and Europa League campaign in August. PSG are 12 points clear at the top of the table with a game in hand and they will even wait to see whether they will be crowned champions of the league or the season will be declared null and void.
UEFA Champions League and UEFA Europa League
According to reports, UEFA is planning to conduct the finals of the Champions League and Europa League in late August. However, this will be only possible if the respective leagues start their campaign by June or July. The UCL Final is scheduled to take place in Istanbul this year. A bigger challenge lies ahead of UEFA wherein French teams like PSG and Lyon still compete in these tournaments and with sporting action suspended in France, the problem needs to be fixed. Adding to it, with leagues already being cancelled, it becomes important for UEFA to come up with proper guidelines for the qualification process of next season.
Indian Football
The finals of Indian Super League was played behind closed doors before the footballing action stopped. The I-League season was underway but was suspended with 28 games remaining. However, the season has been cancelled and Mohun Bagan have been adjudged as the champions but there will be no relegation in the league this season. The cancellation of the league has also led to the termination of the contracts of the players by a few clubs. This will raise a lot of questions as the players will not get their scheduled salary. This will even lead to a few legal battles between clubs and players.
From my point of view, declaring a season null and void would be an injustice to the players and club. There are teams who are quite comfortable to win the league while there are some who will compete with others for glory. There are few options like divisional playoffs or points per game system which can be considered. However as a huge football fan I would love to see the action to return and entertain us to the fullest.
It is highly unlikely that we will be witnessing a full footballing action this summer, there certainly will be some restrictions and curtailments. It is very likely that the matches will be played under closed doors and many of the unimportant fixtures will be scrapped. However as football fans we should be optimistic about the outcome and at least hope for our favourite leagues to reach a result.
- Kshitij
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