• Live: last minute of the coronavirus
  • Games - to start on July 23, 2021

Spanish football looks with concern at the twist that the Government has just given to confinement. Such a turn - suspending all non-essential economic activity - responds to the fact that the epidemic is far from being controlled. Grieving for the victims and health care come first, with all players and club staff under cover at home, but are immediately shaken by the financial impact of the virus. Football is no stranger to it either.

The different groups around the ball find it difficult to talk about the future, about the social reopening and about the return of the matches, while the daily stream of deaths is still unaffordable, frightening. But quietly, with discretion, plans are being made for the return, without knowing when it will be. If the Italian mirror also works in this sector, the authorities have already begun to slide that it will be difficult for professional or amateur sports to be authorized in May. Because one thing will be a gradual awakening -some go to work, go out wisely to the streets, bars with rigorous distancing measures ...- and another will allow 22 players to run after a ball, collide and share costumes.

Therefore, in the League they begin to study a new calendar that would go beyond June 30 , the traditional barrier that marks the end of each season. This means that a number of days, whatever they were, would invade the month of July and, it is not ruled out, that also August. That is, official football and with everything at stake in the middle of summer. The objective is to finish the current competitions, "be that as it may," repeating the expression that the president of the Federation, Luis Rubiales, used last week. In fact, he followed the line of his arch-enemy Javier Tebas, the president of the League. Both institutions have no choice but to go hand in hand in this, under the peremptory need to close "be that as it may" the suspended campaign.

Why? "It would be a huge mess, impossible to solve," they admit in one of the great clubs. From the nuclei of power of Spanish football, it is ensured that it is easier - within the complexity - to transfer to 2021 mammoth, but closed events, such as the European Championship or the Games, than to cancel football tournaments without the remaining matches having been played .

A real chaos

Regardless of who is proclaimed champion, the most serious problems would be two: 1. The impossibility of fairly assigning promotions and descents, as well as the classification for the coveted European competitions, especially the Champions. AND 2. The lethal, in many cases, a bite to the finances of the clubs that would be to lose the television income corresponding to those disappeared days.

To cushion the official football, it would have to break in the summer, reaching, if necessary, even linking -so the League shuffles- this season with the next, which would start later, not in mid-August as usual.

The extension has its crumb, because in addition to having to adjust the times of the matches to the Iberian heat, the contracts of the players that end next June 30 should be extended, an exception on which FIFA, UEFA and national federations.

Summer without rest

The largest clubs would also have to give up their million-dollar international tours, although at the moment it seems utopian that they could be carried out in the global panorama of the epidemic. Afterwards, it would be necessary to restructure the 2020/21 academic year, making the most of an agenda that would be fastened with the delayed Euro Cup . If the summer holidays seriously jeopardize the footballers, even more so the Christmas holidays . That traditional break could come with matches for the first time in Spain.

«I speak for myself, but it is something that I have already discussed with other colleagues: of course we are ready to play in the summer or whenever. We are aware of the extraordinary situation we live in, "says Jorge Molin from Getafe. The changing rooms know that their salary stability will depend to a large extent on whether the League can finish and the clubs get paid on television.

Even so, from the Association of Spanish Soccer Players, its president, David Aganzo , calls for caution and voice in the redesign of the calendar. The absence of summer rest does not convince him: «Now all we have to do is talk about health, about preventing infections. We are flexible, but afterwards, both in the return of the current season and in the summer, there should be a preseason. Soccer with players without physical training is a risk and nonsense.

The union leader also points out that the recoverable paid permit that the government has just imposed should not be applied to soccer players. "They are not on vacation at home, but training and carrying out the tasks that their company, their club, has entrusted to them to return to the competition in the best possible way."

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

Know more

  • Spain
  • FIFA
  • Javier Thebes
  • Luis Rubiales
  • sports
  • First division
  • Coronavirus
  • Covid 19

LaLiga Santander 2019 - 2020Fear in Spanish football due to the coronavirus: closed door, suspension of LaLiga, contagion of players ...?

Football The postponement of the Euro Cup, alternative for the Champions League and leagues

SoccerThe last goodbye of Lorenzo Sanz: "Son, I have it complicated"