The coronavirus pandemic threatened not only the current draw of the Russian football championship, interrupted after the 22nd round. The beginning of the next season in the Russian Premier League may also be postponed for some time, because of which there is a risk that it will not be played out as usual in the spring of 2021. However, the head coach of Zenit 2 Vladislav Radimov has an idea how to solve this potential problem.
According to the former Zenit player and the Russian national team, the number of matches of the next national championship will be best halved, abandoning the usual system.
“What if the next RPL championship is played from one round? The owner of the field shall be determined by lot! Then there will be time to finish this season! If you manage to defeat this muck, of course, ”the former midfielder commented on the current mess due to the coronavirus.
The current Russian football championship is stopped until April 10. The RPL leadership made such a decision on March 17, when most European championships were already interrupted. Many of them also initially took a break for a certain period, after which they were forced to extend it. Now the same probability exists in the Russian Premier League. So, the player of “Ufa” Vyacheslav Krotov in an interview with RT has already expressed doubts about the fact that the rally will resume on that date.
If the current season drags on, the next one will be postponed, and in Russian realities this may lead to difficulties in the near future. The leading European championships still have the opportunity to hold matches in winter and early spring, but in Russia there is no such opportunity, and it is unlikely to use the time from December to February for holding unplayed matches.
Because of this, the RPL has to cherish every free day on the calendar and start the next season quite early - already in mid-July. However, even according to the most optimistic forecasts, the usual start of the new Russian championship will most likely have to be postponed, as eight more rounds of the previous one, three stages of the Country Cup and a couple of butt matches with FNL teams for upgrading remain unplayed. Also need time for vacation for the players and several weeks for training camps. Even without a pandemic, it would be difficult to arrange all these activities within a four-month period, and with it it becomes an absolutely impossible task.
So, when the old season is finished and the time has finally come to start a new one, there may simply not be enough days for its full implementation. And then Radimov’s proposal would be very helpful. The results of one round may be enough to determine the champion of the country, since all 16 teams will already play each other once, and the sports principle will not be violated.
At the same time, as Radimov noted, there is a problem of an unfair distribution of home and away matches. All teams have the right to conduct them, and the draw could just resolve the dispute. However, anyway, someone is lucky to take opponents on their field eight times, and someone seven. In such a situation, it would be fair to hold one of the matches of each club on a neutral field, especially since there is no shortage of high-quality arenas after the World Cup, and some of them still have not accepted RPL matches.
A well-known sports journalist Vasily Utkin entered into a polemic with Radimov, who noted that the reduction in the number of matches will affect the cost of television rights and, accordingly, the income of clubs. But the head coach of Zenit-2 objected that in such a situation it would not be possible to extract maximum profit, and even European cups could switch to a reduced format.
“And stop the championship now?” This is also a financial loss. You can’t do without them. But it seems to me to play more important. And also Eurocups of the next season to play as before, immediately playoffs, without a group stage. Losses too, but without it in any way. I see it like that, ”said Radimov.
Fans, too, are unlikely to be glad that the number of matches will be halved immediately. However, a way out of this situation can also be found. Next spring, if there is time to conduct several more rounds, you can organize a separate round of the tournament with the division of the RPL into two groups - the eight best teams will hold another round in the dispute for medals and trips to European cups, and the remaining eight will be determined by the results of seven additional rounds who will be in the FNL, and who will keep registration in the elite division.
A similar format for the championship was already used in the transition to the autumn-spring system, but it is not the only possible one that the fans would like. The entertainment of the second stage of the Russian championship could increase significantly if we borrowed the elimination tournament from the Cup and European competitions. The first round in this case would determine the seeding of the participants of this playoffs.
Such a system has long been adopted in hockey, basketball and other sports, and in football it was adopted only by the American MLS. For Europe, this may be too daring an experiment, but in conditions when there may be too little time to determine the champion, such a move would allow the fastest and most fair determination of the strongest team in the country.