Global football brought to unprecendented standstill: what happens next?

Football across the globe has been brought to a standstill following mass postponement of fixtures in an unprecedented shutdown of elite level sport following the continued escalation of the COVID-19 health emergency.

Sport, which so often provides a release from the regular doom and gloom of reality, indisputedly takes a backseat at times like these, and the necessary and appropriate measures have to be taken to best protect the health of global populations.

It has, however, disrupted the footballing calendar, including in Portugal, and has led to a logistical nightmare for organisations as to how best to reshuffle the fixture list if and when society is in an appropriate state to allow football to resume.

Which countries have been affected?

Italy were the first country to see their footballing calendar brought to a halt, a partial postponement of all sporting activity in the country coming into effect on 22nd February, before a nationwide suspension on 9th March as the country entered lockdown due to the sheer severity of the outbreak observed in the nation.

Serie A is scheduled to restart on 4th April, but there is growing expectation that that deadline is simply implausible and unlikely to be achieved.

Several countries went on to follow suit, with Portugal announcing that they were suspending all footballing activity for an indefinite period of time on Thursday, calling into question whether the current campaign will even be completed, or when it will be restarted. The likes of Dutch, Spanish and American football was also cancelled for the foreseeable future.

What followed on from that was the postponement of both the Champions League and Europa League for the foreseeable future, with the second leg of each of the ties in both competitions delayed until a later date depending on future developments.

It was a sharp change in stance from UEFA, who only on Thursday saw 6 of the 8 Europa League Round of sixteen matches completed, including the clash between Pedro Martins' Olympiakos and Nuno Espirito Santo's Wolves which took place in Greece behind closed doors and finished 1-1.

And the English Premier League and EFL, who were not even planning on playing their fixtures behind closed doors for the upcoming gameweek, completed a dramatic U-turn late on as they announced the immediate suspension of their footballing activity, until at least the 3rd April. Both France and Germany have since taken steps to suspend their own leagues too, further depleting the football calendar.

Euro 2020, expected to get underway in June this year, is also expected to be postponed until next summer.

What happens next?

There is no rulebook on what happens next. Unprecedented times come with many questions and very few answers. There are options on the table that will be considered, though no one option is likely to be unanimously approved. And in Portugal, that’s an important detail.

That’s because, should the 2019-20 Primeira Liga season fail to be completed on time, clubs will be given the opportunity to decide what happens next. Any decision must be unanimous amongst all clubs though, rather than typical majority rule. If no decision is then agreed upon, the government will intervene and make a final decision.

And the solution which is eventually decided upon largely depends on when football is able to get back underway. The time at which this is able to occur could decide the route which is taken.

Option 1: Restart the season at a delayed date and finish in full

The straightforward option, in many respects, is to simply carry on from where we left off whenever time allows. Leagues across the globe are generally in the final stretch, with most leagues having ten or so matches remaining until the conclusion of the campaign.

This would be the fairest decision in the eyes of many, and would mean that promotion, relegation and European qualification is easily defined for the following season, as well as the awarding of the league title.

With Porto and Benfica separated by just a single point, this is again proving an exceptionally close title race, and so much could still happen between now and the end of the season. Concluding the season, which we are over two thirds of the way through, would be the only just way to declare a champion.

But this, of course, may not be the most feasible. While leagues across the globe are hoping to return to the field as soon as April, that may simply be far too ambitious and, depending on the situation, we could actually see football delayed until June - perhaps later.

This would obviously collide with Euro 2020, though with the continental competition expected to be postponed until next summer, that wouldn’t be the issue. Instead, the problem would be regarding the knock-on effect. If the season is only resumed in June, the current campaign, with Champions League and Europa League needing to be completed alongside, would only likely be finished by late August, at best, by which time the 2020-21 season is supposed to already be well underway.

And, of course, if we are delayed until June 2020, that will have been 3 months of no football whatsoever; players will not be match fit, and may actually require a mini-preseason before resuming, delaying the start of the campaign further.

Players would then likely require a short summer break when the season does actually end - the three months that would have seen no footballing activity because of a global pandemic surely can’t be considered a holiday for players - meaning the next campaign would likely only kick-off in around October - and that’s somewhat optimistic, giving players a much shorter break than is ordinarily the case.

This could all probably work for the Portuguese top flight; October to May is likely sufficient time to conclude the Primeira Liga (though it would be tight, and would likely require the cancellation of the League Cup and perhaps Portuguese Cup too), but you then have to consider lower leagues with more teams in each division, as well as the Champions League and Europa League.

After all, both the Champions and Europa League have a very lengthy qualification process, which is actually supposed to begin in June. By August 2020, 94 Champions League and 157 Europa League matches are supposed to already be completed, as well as the group stage draw of both competitions. If the season only properly gets underway in September or so, there’s no way Europe’s two most illustrious competitions will be completed by May next year in addition to all the domestic competitions, and if the Euros are suspended until 2021, all club football, at least at elite level, will have to be finished by mid-May.

So if we do prioritise the current season and finish it in full, next season will certainly be affected, virtually impossible to fit into the footballing calendar in time for the next Euros, meaning it may well have to be shortened in some way. We may see one, or some, of the following come into effect if that is the case:

• Cancelling 2020-21 domestic cup competitions

• Champions League and Europa League 2020-21 qualifying matches decided by only one leg instead of two, or scrapped altogether.

• Champions League and Europa League 2020-21 group stage disbanded, straight to knockout football instead.

• Each team plays each other just once in their respective domestic leagues for the 2020-21 season.

Option two: Use play-off matches to decide this season, then play next season in full

Some would argue, though, that causing widespread disruption to two seasons when you only have to disrupt one makes little sense - and that could be considered a fair argument. Why carry logistical problems over to the 2020-21 season when you could just limit the disruption to the current campaign?

With that in mind, perhaps the most logical option is to cut corners to finish the current season. That means, rather than playing all the remaining fixtures, stage play-off matches to decide some of the most crucial elements of the current season, such as title winners, promotion, relegation and European qualification.

This, however, would be far from ideal, or fair, deciding an entire season on just a handful of matches. And who do you include in the title play-off? Or for promotion/relegation? What about in England, where Liverpool can mathematically be caught, but have built up a near-insurmountable lead?

In Portugal, it would likely be easier; a two-legged play-off between Porto and Benfica could be conducted to decide the title winner - though that would be immensly unfair on Porto should they lose, sitting one point above Benfica currently and having beaten them twice already this season. And what about Braga? They are 14 points off Porto, so have almost no chance of winning the league - but it is still mathematically possible.

Turning the final stages of the league calendar into what is essentially knockout football is therefore an option, but a bad one at best.

Option 3: End the season now - however the table stands is how the table finishes

Another really straightforward option is to simply end the season now. In any league where over half the season has been played, the way the table sits right now is how it ends; so Porto would win the league in Portugal, Liverpool in England, Juventus in Italy etc.

This becomes more complicated for deciding promotion/relegation and European qualification. Rio Ave, Guimaraes and Famalicao are all separated by 1 point in Portugal; is it just to give the 5th European qualification place to Rio Ave, who currently sit 5th, when so much could have changed between now and the end of the season?

And the picture is even more complicated in England. Sheffield United are in the hunt for a potential Champions League place if Manchester City’s ban is upheld; they currently have a game in hand and, if they win, would move up to 5th in the table, which could be enough to play in Europe’s most illustrious competition. How can you end the season with some teams having played fewer matches?

You could therefore stage play-off matches to decide these European qualifying places, though can you justify staging these fixtures to decide certain things aspects of the season when you don’t do so for the title?

Promotion-relegation is an even more complex situation. Can you relegate a team based on goal difference when the season is still supposed to have considerable time remaining, which is the case in England? Even Portimonense in Portugal, who are 6 points adrift of safety, would argue that they could have made up that ground in the remaining 10 matches to stay up.

One thing you could certainly do in Portugal, therefore, is simply promote the top two from the Segunda Liga, and cancel relegation. That would increase the top flight to 20 teams, with 4 going down in the 2020-21 season and only two coming up to then rapidly restore the typical 18-team Primeira Liga.

And you could, to ensure every team has played the same number of games, go back to the halfway point of the season and take that as the final standings instead. That does mean erasing several matches from the history books though, and teams who hit form in the second half of the seaosn certainly wouldn’t approve that. It would also mean Benfica win the Portuguese league title instead of Porto, who would win it if the season ended now.

So these are feasible option, though it is complicated and does have some legal implications - as will any decision UEFA and national football associations and organisations take for that matter.

Option 4: Merge the 2019-20 and 2020-21 seasons

Another option is merging the current campaign with the next one to make one much larger season. This ultimately would depend on when football is able to be resumed, but should it be that we only restart in the summer months, this could be a good way to keep football activity going, which is particularly crucial for lower league clubs and sides from the top flight of less reputable leagues, without having the time constraints in place of trying to complete two separate seasons.

There’s lots of ways this could work. You could get to the end of the current season - so 34 matches in Portugal, 38 in England etc. - and then split the league in two, so all the sides in the top half of the table then play each other twice, and all the sides in the bottom half play each other twice. This would extend the league the right amount, meaning competitive football remains but is not pressured into completing within a very tight deadline, and the title, promotion/relegation and European football qualification can then all be resolved fairly.

That’s just one way it could happen. You could keep the league open and have everyone play each other three times instead of twice, the third time either at a neutral venue or split evenly between how many matches each side plays home and away.

It’s not an ideal solution, of course - what would happen to the 2020-21 Champions League and Europa League? For Portuguese clubs, it would mean over a year of no European football if such tournaments didn’t go ahead; not a major problem, but a lack of financial income that would have been so important to the likes of Benfica and Porto from Champions League qualification is lost for an entire campaign. And you can’t imagine UEFA would be happy about having their two most lucrative seasons out of action for an entire year.

They could re-open the tournaments - so finish the current Champions League and Europa League campaigns and then open it up again after the summer, using the standings from the 2018-19 season to determine who qualifies, but there wouldn’t be enough time to complete all the usual qualifiers as well as the tournament proper. So it would be a little makeshift and not as polished as normal. Better than nothing, though, some would say.

Option five: The season is void, next season begins at the correct, or earliest, opportunity

Perhaps the final option is to simply cancel the current campaign and start all over again in 2020-21. Unjust, infuriating for many - perhaps to the benefit of others.

Should this season be cancelled, no relegation would occur and no title winner would be declared, and perhaps promotion would be scrapped too. Or, two or so teams would get promoted, depending on the league system, and no teams would go down, expanding the league for the following season.

This would be extroardinarily unpopular for certain clubs in Europe; Porto may be slightly peeved, but couldn’t have too many complaints with the title race so close. Liverpool, however, sit top of the English top flight with an extraordinary 25 point lead. Can you justify not giving them their first title in 30 years?

And what about European qualification? Who would get Champions League and Europa League qualification? The respective domestic leagues would have to determine this and submit it to UEFA, but any decision would have to be agreed between clubs - and that is no easy task.

There therefore seems to be no ideal solution, though there is one thing we can all agree on: it doesn’t really matter. Whilst unprecedented disruption to our beloved game is of great disappointment to our football mad community, a few months without the sport we love is a minimal price to pay to ensure we are best placed to deal with the emergency situation we are currently embroiled in.