Southampton chief executive Martin Semmens is hopeful the Premier League season can be concluded by the end of June but admits there are challenges to overcome.
Professional football in England, including the Premier League, has been suspended until at least April 30 due to the coronavirus outbreak and there is the chance that the absence of football could be extended further.
UEFA’s decision to postpone the European Championships until next summer has opened a window for Europe’s domestic leagues to conclude their seasons, removing an action-packed tournament across the continent from the schedule.
And Liverpool look set to have the opportunity to wrap up the title, after the Premier League announced provisions for the campaign to be "extended indefinitely" until completion.
There are still some challenges to overcome, but Saints CEO Semmens believes that extending the contract of players for a few weeks beyond the end of June would not be a difficult task - and admits he’s hopeful of concluding the campaign by that date.
“We hope to get the league done by the end of June and that would be easier for everybody,” he told BBC Radio Solent.
“As soon as you go past that date there are then those legal challenges and issues that we have to fulfil.
“But if we end up playing until 15 July and you had to extend a players contract by two weeks, I just don’t think when you look at all the challenges the country is facing right now, to try and convince a player to play two more weeks football and get paid very nicely to do it before he moves to a new club, I don’t believe that will be a substantial challenge.
“The challenge is making sure we don’t have a knock-on effect into other seasons and make football compromised as the years go on.
"All we’ve got to do is say we all want to play in this window and play football games on a certain date, it is not actually as difficult as it sounds, that part of it.
“In general there will be some knock-on effects to the transfer window, to budgets across Europe for buying players and all those relative areas of change, but for us as a business, our business model is not affected as long as we do continue to play football.”
