British football is facing a crisis unprecedented in the modern era after the postponement of the league seasons in England and Scotland plunged clubs into a prolonged spell of financial and legal uncertainty.
The Premier League, EFL and FA, in an abrupt reversal of their previous position, together agreed on Friday morning to suspend all competitive football until 4 April. Later in the day the Scottish and Welsh FAs followed suit, with the Scottish ban extending all the way to grassroots football.
The decision was taken in light of a sudden burst of cases of coronavirus among Premier League players and staff, most notably the Arsenal manager, Mikel Arteta, and Chelsea forward Callum Hudson-Odoi. On Friday top-flight clubs, including Everton, Watford and West Ham, had been forced to take quarantine measures.
Arteta is not in a serious condition and issued a statement. “Thanks for your words and support,” he wrote. “Feeling better already. We’re all facing a huge & unprecedented challenge. Everyone’s health is all that matters right now. Protect each other by following the guidelines & we’ll come through this together. Well done PL for making the right decisions.”
While there is relief across the game that football has taken the decision to suspend play there is also genuine concern that the season may never be completed. This would certainly not be the wish of the Premier League and EFL, the former insisting that “despite the challenges, it is the Premier League’s aim to reschedule the displaced fixtures, when it is safe to do so”.
However with government advisers believing infections may not come to a peak for another three months, the decision could be taken out of the hands of governing bodies.
With a three-week period at least before another ball is kicked in anger, other issues are set to come to the fore that could provide clubs with significant challenges. First and foremost will be concerns over revenues and contractual obligations likely to affect clubs up and down the football pyramid. “At the moment every club will be looking at key contracts with sponsors and advertisers, trying to identify where the risk hotspots are,” said Andrew McGregor, a senior associate at the sports law firm Brabners.
“The commercial concerns will be around a reduction in value of contracts, caused by suspension or playing behind closed doors. Take perimeter advertising, which in the Premier League can sell for anything from £30,000 to £60,000 a minute. Partners will have minutes included in their deals with the club; so what happens if there are no fans in the stadium?
“Some clubs might have a partial rebate in their contracts, others might have ‘force majeure’ clauses. But often these are almost throwaway, tacked on to the back page of a deal because people don’t anticipate it happening. To have an event of this magnitude and for clubs to then be looking at a clause four or five sentences long, it is going to leave a lot of legal dispute about how to interpret them.”
Contractual obligations to partners and sponsors are just one part of the picture. Centrally there is the issue of wages, not only for players but support and ground staff. There is also the possibility of legal claims being brought by third party contractors such as caterers or in-house betting providers, if games do not go ahead.
Another factor that could complicate any hopes of completing the season is the timing of players’ contracts. Commonly contracts run until 30 June, which would mean that, if delayed matches were to be played later than that date, players who had previously been under contract may no longer be and could in fact have agreed deals to sign at new clubs.
There is a possibility that clubs get caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. “If you start looking at wholesale cancellation, that’s when it gets really complicated,” McGregor said. “You might have restriction of trade, anti-competitive complaints, if clubs are denied promotion or relegation.
“I think a full cancellation or early cancellation would be way down the list of possible actions, just simply because of financial or integrity issues that are unfathomable in terms of what they might look like.”
For many clubs the three-week pause will provide an opportunity to take stock and work out a strategy, in the hope that the picture has improved by the time another decision is taken. The Premier League, who met by video conference, will meanwhile convene again next week following an extraordinary meeting of the members of Uefa, where it is anticipated the summer’s European Championship will be postponed until 2021.
On Friday Uefa announced the postponement of the remaining scheduled ties in the Europa League and Champions League, including Manchester City’s home leg against Real Madrid in the round of 16. With this move, and those taken by the home nations, it brings about a complete shutdown of European club football, comparable to that caused by the second world war.
Earlier this week Italy announced the suspension of league football after having played matches behind closed doors for some weeks. La Liga in Spain then followed suit. Yesterday the German Bundesliga and French Ligues 1 and 2 also postponed matches until April.
The German football league (DFL) had been reluctant to disrupt matches, and Bayern Munich had been scheduled to play at Union Berlin behind closed doors until late on Friday afternoon.
That decision drew public criticism, including from Bayern midfielder Thiago Alcantara who wrote on Twitter: “This is crazy. Please stop fooling around and land on reality. Let’s be honest, there are much more important priorities than any sport.”
Bayern’s director Karl Heinz Rumenigge also intervened publicly calling on Munich fans not to travel to the capital. “These are all contacts that we must prevent so that the virus does not spread quickly”, he said. “Please do not come to the stadiums – you are not doing the clubs and the players a favour.”
By Friday evening the match had been postponed and the DFL had issued the following statement: “The goal is still to end the season by the summer – from a sporting point of view, but especially because an early end of the season could have existential consequences for some clubs.”
