Something’s got to give
European football is teetering on a
knife-edge. One positive COVID test
too many, and the entire tightrope
could sever with consequences far
more financially damaging than even
this year’s initial lockdown.
This has come as no surprise to
FIFPRO. The international players’
union has been warning FIFA, UEFA
and the European leagues and clubs
about the increasing risks of a fixtures
logjam to players’ short-term fitness
and long-term health.
Those warnings were repeatedly
drowned out by trumpets proclaiming
the equation of more competitions +
more matches = more money. After
all, came the response to FIFPRO, it’s
your members whose pay packets
will benefit. Why deny them the
rewards of their extra labours?
The fixtures confusion created by
the COVID-19 pandemic sparked
a mixed response in Europe. Some
leagues shut down immediately,
others waited to resume behind
closed doors, then UEFA devised its
Final Eight tournaments to resolve
the Champions and Europa Leagues.
Before the action kicked off in
Portugal and Germany, UEFA president
Aleksander Ceferin insisted that thisrevised solution was a one-off
reaction to the emergency, never
to be repeated. But no one, in this
pandemic world, can see even six
months ahead. Before the Champions
League final, Ceferin was conceding
that, just maybe, the enforced format
had some merit.
A repeat may prove inevitable.
Ceferin had learned, fast, that the
route ahead for football, even within
its date-specific international
calendar, is clouded in doubt.
Today’s fans are oblivious to the
bad old days of the mid-20th century
when international and domesticcompetitions tumbled all over each
other. As late as the1970s, star South
American players missed World Cups
because their clubs refused to release
them. Not until 20 years ago was a
formal international calendar laid down.
It was devised by Michel Platini,
at the behest of then FIFA president
Sepp Blatter. Platini, in his pre-UEFA
days, did a good job. The calendar
slotted national team dates around
domestic demands and international
club needs. It was jammed tight, but
it worked – and the big clubs still had
the freedom to undertake lucrativepreseason trips around north
America and Asia to suit their
multi-national sponsors.
How FIFA and Blatter paid Platini
for his labours is now, two decades
later, the subject of a Swiss criminal
investigation. But that is a story for
another day.
Platini did not envisage that
Champions League groups might
not kick off until October; he did
not envisage that UEFA might create
a Nations League to further clog up
the works; he did not envisage the
complex intermingling of Nations
League with Euro 2020 play-offs.THEWORLD THIS MONTH
THE INSIDER
Keir
RADNEDGE
No sooner are they out of the way
in the spring then national managers
must confront the World Cup qualifying
challenge. This is already a struggle
for the rest of the world. In both Asia
and South America, postponements
of six months or more have been
enforced. Why should Europe, with
its later start, have it any easier?
That is why FIFA has conceded
that national team breaks can now
be triple-headers instead of just
double-headers. That is why domestic
cups are jettisoning two-legged ties and
replays. That is why UEFA has ruled
that multiple postponements because
of positive COVID tests are not possible.
Teams undermined by quarantine and
isolation orders will be deemed to
have forfeited their matches, losing
them without a ball being kicked.
This draconian solution emphasises
how impossibly tight the calendar has
become. No room for manoeuvre. No
room for unexpected interruptions,
delays, deferments. Even bad weather
is a threat to the calendar, never
mind a global pandemic.Exhausted...Elite
footballers are being
pushed to the maxNo room for manoeuvre. No room for
unexpected interruptions, delays, deferments.Even bad weather is a threat to the calendar,
never mind a global pandemic
Nations League...This
month’s matches will
add to the fixture
congestion