By Tony Attwood
This story is jumping from newspaper to newspaper in England, and seems to have originated in the Athletic. The Mail, Sun, Standard, Mirror all have it, although interestingly the heavyweight papers such as the Guardian, Telegraph and Times don’t run it. Their last comment was from last month when they said things such as “Fifa could keep next transfer window open as far as January”.
This is actually a very common divide among the English newspapers. The heavyweights take a more considered approach with reference to what passes for reality among sports reporters, while the popular papers pick up whatever story is out there and the rest of the mob reproduce it without thought and without checking. Thus is propagated fake news. If, as usual, it all turns out to be untrue, no one apologises. It is all just left and tucked away until next time.
In this case, the original source seems to be The Athletic, so it will be particularly interesting to see if this one is right. If so, then hats of to that publication for having a mole inside Fifa. In the coming days or weeks, we shall see.
So just in case this one is not simple tittle-tattle, here are the details.
Each country will be left to decide when to restart football, and players with contracts running out on 30 June will be allowed to extend their current contracts through negotiations with the clubs to cover the extended season.
In effect, the regulation will mean that the current season will have no official end, and each country can take as long as it likes to get to the conclusion of the campaign. That does of course then leave the problem of a disjointed start to the 2020/1 season, but in many ways we get that already with clubs competing in the extra preliminary preview additional extra round of the European competitions starting in July.
But the benefit is that it means that since the season will be completed sometime, and the broadcasters don’t have to be paid back, which will take a huge pressure off the clubs. I am not sure the broadcasters will like this too much since it will mean games being played in unusual situations (behind closed doors on neutral grounds each day of the week is one option touted) and it is not clear that with such a mass of football on TV what the audiences will be like. However, I suspect the dates of games ultimately is down to each league.
So that gives a £762 million boost to the clubs, and fills in a hole in the accounts. I suspect the FA will still stick its grubby hands out for more taxpayers’ money, but we are used to that. The government will probably be silly enough to pay up.
The knock-on effect is that the transfer window will need to be shifted, and each country will make its own arrangements as to when to finish this season and start the next. One option being discussed is to stand down all the players now, to give them the equivalent of their summer break, and then start them training again in three weeks time. Then the end of the season happens under whatever circumstances (probably behind closed doors and with clubs playing three games a week on neutral grounds), and then we move straight into the 2020/1 season with the European preliminaries.
Obviously the European prelim rounds can’t happen until each league has finished the 2019/20 season, since qualification depends on the placings of the teams, so the Euro schedule is going to have to be redrawn, with matches coming closer together than usual. The Europa League, with its extra round played in January/February each season is going to be heavily squeezed, and countries will be required to make way for this. The abandonment of the League Cup in England, or indeed allowing clubs involved in Europe to opt-out of the Cup, are options to help ease the strain.
The transfer window may be moved, but each country will decide how to run it. In England the dates are set from 10 June to 1 September, and this can easily be moved back to avoid players being transferred while the “old” season is still running. But let us not forget that for most of its life, the English Leagues have had transfers running all the way up to the last four weeks of the season, and by and large the world didn’t end as a result.
The other big change is that player contracts can be extended, although there are no details as to how far. One thought is that they can be extended by mutual agreement between club and player either to the end of the summer transfer window (whenever that turns out to be) or to the end of the January transfer window.
This will cause problems for clubs that are less well endowed financially if contracts are to be discussed before there is certainty about TV money. But whoever looked after the less well-financed clubs? Certainly not Fifa.
Still at least we won’t have any internationals being played, so player injuries could be reduced.
