The world has been in a standstill for weeks now and no one has any clue as to when it will start. With all the major leagues suspended, the ever working football industry has come to an abrupt halt and the fans as well as the teams have no idea what’s going to happen next. With the season almost nearing to its business end the suspension of all the leagues will have some major impact on the footballing calendar.
UEFA has decided to postpone the Champions league and Europa league Finals. The Euro 2020 has become Euro 2021. Serie A decided to postpone indefinitely and many leagues soon followed the suit. After facing some serious criticism, the Premier League also postponed all its game. Following this, there have been talks of what action is supposed to be taken in case the league can no longer be played and if it can be played how will it be adjusted.
This has led to a lot of hulla bulla, particularly amongst the owners of the clubs in relegation battle and Champions League vying teams. The obvious question is what is going to happen if the league is suspended, will the league standings at the present moment dictate who will survive and who will go down? Will there be a playoff between the bottom 3 teams in PL and top 3 teams in Championship? Will the season be null and void? Will no one be relegated??
There are talks that PL might adopt a 22 league season for 2020/21 season so that no team has to go down and Championship sides can also come up. But then again 1 team will miss out on getting promoted which isn’t fair either.
The Serie A president has suggested that there might be a play-off for the title in between the top 4 teams and one for relegation as well. Well this in theory seems alright, but it isn’t fair to all the teams, teams that have been many points clear of each other.
Play-offs seem alright for leagues who already have the relegation play-offs like the Ligue 1 and Bundesliga. If PL were to apply the same strategy, then it will be a loss for Liverpool who have been 22 points clear at the top and have clearly wrapped the title since January. Liverpool surely won’t agree to this, it would be very harsh on them. Many clubs embroiled in the relegation battle will also vote against it.
And even if they give Liverpool the title, there will more questions than there are answers. If Premier League follows the current table, the Champions Leagues spot are now occupied by Manchester City, Leicester and Chelsea with Man United, Wolves and Sheffield right behind them. If Manchester City’s CL ban remains, the fifth team on the table will qualify for the Champions League. Right now, Manchester United are 5th with 45 points and Wolves and Sheffield united are on 6th and 7th respectively with 43 points, but of those three Sheffield has played a game less. If Sheffield were to win their game in hand, they will leapfrog United to the coveted CL spot. Arsenal and Man City also have a game in hand and if Arsenal do win it, they will go above Spurs in the standings.
The same applies to Aston Villa who will go out of relegation zone if they win their tie in hand.
The other way is to play all the games behind closed doors after this pandemic is over, but the problem is nobody has any clue when that is. It could be weeks, maybe even months. And if it goes beyond June then it will be very hard to fit all the games in the vacation period and it will also be extremely hard for players to be injury free for the next season ahead and Euro 2021
As crazy as it might sound, scraping the season will be fair for all the teams, not just in England but around Europe.
