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Football London
Football London
Sport
Joe Doyle & Alan Smith

Euro 2020 postponed until 2021 due to coronavirus outbreak

The European Championships originally scheduled for this summer will be moved to 2021, paving the way for the continent's major leagues to be completed during the summer.

UEFA are this afternoon holding a video conference meeting of all members, followed by a meeting of their executive committee.

But the decision to push the Euros back by 12 months has been confirmed by one national association.

The Norwegian FA used their Twitter account to announce the news. "UEFA has decided that the European Championship is postponed to 2021. It will be played from 11 June to 11 July next year. More information coming," it said.

The governing body are yet to confirm but an official announcement is imminent.

That delay will, in theory, free up space for the Premier League campaign to be ended in June or even early July. The 20 top flight clubs will convene on Thursday to discuss their next steps.

While last week's decision was to suspend games until the first week of April, resuming within three weeks now seems highly unlikely.

The clubs are also expected to discuss holding games behind closed doors but are also closely following the latest government advice.

Several other options have been mooted, including the possibility of a 22-team league next season with five teams relegated should this campaign be cancelled. Liverpool would still likely be crowned champions but no team would drop down to the Champions hip and the second tier's current top two would be promoted.

That is not a solution to satisfy all stakeholders, however, and would likely lead to a number of legal challenges from other clubs.

The Premier League has reiterated that no firm decisions have yet been made and there remains a growing belief that it could be months before games are played again if the outbreak continues to worsen at such a dramatic rate.

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