The Premier League Plays On, for Now

Despite threats of a stoppage due to COVID-19 outbreaks, clubs didn't even bring things to as much as a vote when deciding to continue as planned with their festive fixtures.

The decision is, for now, that there is no decision. The Premier League's clubs met Monday to discuss whether, after a weekend during which six matches had to be postponed because of COVID-19 outbreaks, there might be value in some sort of break to try to prevent the spread of the virus. Without as much as a vote, they decided to keep going ahead as scheduled with a further meeting provisionally arranged to discuss the situation in two weeks.

There had been a proposal, supported by Liverpool among others, to delay one complete round of festive matches. The Christmas schedule is always concentrated—a tradition beloved by English fans and treated with bewilderment by outsiders—and there are concerns that this year, with some squads severely depleted, that the strain of three matches in a week may be too much for players.

"We play Wednesday, Sunday and now Tuesday, it's not possible—we don't have the players. It can happen we might have another case or two so players will have to quarantine," Liverpool manager Jürgen Klopp told Sky Sports following Sunday's 2–2 draw vs. Tottenham. "The 26th and the 28th—it's really not possible. We would prefer to play, but we need help with the fixtures. The big thing we all have to talk about is if we can carry on or not, but if we carry on we can't carry on like usual."

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But postponing games is always difficult, with fans who may have already made travel arrangements and television contracts to consider. And it's a situation complicated further by the fact that the middle round of games this Christmas—matchweek 20, the matches that had seemed the likeliest to be postponed—is one of the two rounds for which the U.K. rights are held by Amazon. Not unreasonably, they want the large audience provided by the week after Christmas and not games randomly dotted about midweek evenings in the spring.

The bumper crowds provided by matches at holiday time are another reason clubs are keen for games to go ahead—although that of course is an issue in itself. It’s not only that packing tens of thousands of people into a stadium seems unwise as the omicron wave sweeps the country, even if they are outside, it’s that to get to games many will travel on packed public transport. Fans, barring a future ruling of matches needing to be played behind closed doors, at least will have to provide proof of double-vaccination or a negative test to be admitted to stadiums from this week.

Beyond the specific financial issues, the wider problem is the congested nature of the calendar. To postpone a whole round of fixtures is made extremely difficult because there is very little possible time for them to be played later in the season. And with the summer break reduced to fit in the November 2022 World Cup in Qatar, it’s simply not practical to extend the season by a week or two.

It’s indicative of the problem that after Tottenham had been forced to postpone its Europa Conference League game against Rennes, it was impossible to find a date before the deadline of Dec. 31 to reschedule it, meaning the club had to forfeit the fixture and with it its place in the competition. At a time when taking a risk to play the game could mean the disease being passed on, that is an absurd situation.

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Football has suffered for years from the problem that there is an insatiable demand to play games to make money. This is not a new issue; it’s just that there now exists a recognition that players cannot be expected to play more than two games a week. But what is new is that congestion used to be caused by cup ties going to multiple replays, or bad weather leading to postponements. Better drainage and the abandonment of replays by most competitions (the FA is doing away with third- and fourth-round replays for the FA Cup this year to try to ease the pressure on the calendar) mean that is no longer the case. The bigger issue for elite sides is that European competition has expanded—and that will only get worse when the Swiss model for the early stage of the Champions League is introduced in 2024.

But for now Premier League football seems to have followed the lead of the rest of the U.K. There remain very few formal restrictions—masks are mandated on public transport and in crowded indoor spaces such as shops, but there is no enforcement—but with daily records being set for the number of people testing positive, many have retreated into a de facto self-imposed lockdown, something that has already had a significant impact on restaurants and bars. Under formal lockdown, they were compensated for that through the furlough scheme; for now, though, there has been no such government support.

It was noticeable how many empty seats there were at Tottenham vs. Liverpool on Sunday. Tickets had been sold, but many preferred not to attend. It seems like that will be the way of it for the next few weeks at least: life, and football, going on, with everybody every aware that the situation is very far from normal.