The Premier League finally resumes on Wednesday night, heralding a summer of English football very different from the kind anyone envisaged the last time a match was played.
Aston Villa will face Sheffield United before Manchester City take on Arsenal in the first of 92 fixtures that are, officials hope, set to be completed in short order by the beginning of August.
It’s a welcome return for fans and players alike, many of whom have found the football-shaped hole in their lives just one of the eerie aspects of the Covid-19 pandemic. But the virus means this is far from a return to normality, more a compromise intended to fend off legal and financial disaster for the national sport.
“I am happy to come back to routine,” said Pep Guardiola in the lead-up to the match. Conducting his traditional pre-match briefing via Zoom, the Manchester City manager admitted he had his own doubts about the restart.
“If you ask me how is the team, I don’t know. Tomorrow we will see how is the level of the team,” he said. “I think we are ready to play one game. But three days after another one and four days after another one. We are not ready, not just Man City, all teams.”
The environment to which Guardiola and his peers come back to is a long way away from March when City’s match against Arsenal became the first Premier League match to be affected by the pandemic, postponed after it was revealed some of the Arsenal players had shaken hands with a Greek shipping magnate who had contracted Covid-19.
At the time it was unclear how many players had met Evangelos Marinakis, who is also the owner of Nottingham Forest, nor how long they had spent with him. Now, as the season begins again, players are to have every close contact with another individual monitored by GPS. Meanwhile, City’s Etihad Stadium will be subject to 31 new obligatory protocols designed to make the game against Arsenal “biosecure”.
It is just one aspect of the many provisions agreed between clubs and the league’s management during discussions over how to restart the game that dragged out over months. Looming over those talks was the figure of £1.1bn, cited by Premier League chief executive, Richard Masters, as being the potential financial loss should it not be completed this year.
When combined with the possibility of lawsuits from broadcasting partners or even participant clubs should the season be curtailed, a restart eventually became inevitable. What was once a fraught debate, with fears over the risk of spreading the disease and sensitivity over the use of testing and PPE, became settled.
Many dissenting parties were simply worn down over time, but confidence has since been boosted by a successful testing regime amongst players and staff. There have been just 16 positive results for Covid-19 from a total of 8,687 tests carried out since training began again in mid-May.
A strict approach to hygiene, including a ban on players spitting, is not the only change and certainly not the most visible. Every match is to be played without fans, the empty stadiums decoupling a dynamic between the stands and the pitch that has always been central to the sport and the success of the Premier League in particular.
Informed by their clubs on social media that they are missed, no one knows yet when fans will tick through turnstiles again. And so the resumption of the season has become a spectacle made purely for TV.
Every single fixture is to be shown live, with a match to watch almost every day of the week, and often at multiple times of the day. The BBC will show its first live Premier League fixture on 20 June, a relegation battle between Bournemouth and Crystal Palace. Sky, which built its business around paid-for sports, will broadcast 25 games for free on a new channel, Sky Pick. Every company has an idea for injecting “atmosphere” into the coverage, from canned crowd noise on the red button to Tottenham’s plan to stream phone footage of fans watching at home across the stadium’s advertising hoardings.
On the field, there is one big moment that is eagerly anticipated (or dreaded, depending on perspective); Liverpool winning their first league title in 30 years. Jürgen Klopp’s team lead the division by 25 points with only nine games to go and could seal the title against Everton this weekend if City lose against Arsenal.
If they do not then, few expect the wait to go on much longer. Liverpool fans will soon be freed from the anxiety of waiting for a title, only to replace it with the question of how to appropriately – and safely – celebrate its arrival.
With the title race done, the rest of the on-field drama will be of a second order. Who will claim the remaining places for European competition? Which three clubs will be relegated from the division?
For many fans the simple sight of the game back on their screens will be enough. Others will not be able to shake a nasty taste in their mouths. Those within the game, meanwhile, will be watching the viewing figures, with the imminent prospect of another season disrupted by Covid-19 to come.
Ultimately, the Premier League’s return is likely to be short on romance and long on pragmatism.
