Footballers and CoronaVirus

[Tony C]

That's a completely uncorroborated story, I believe.

Pity. I so wanted it to be true.

[Patrick Thistle]

Hoping that was mine!

Yes it was.

Meanwhile:

https://twitter.com/BarrowAFC/status/1239161644267253760?s=19

[jwdd27]

TIL Barrow are known as the Ziggers. Apparently after a terrace chant from the 60s, and thankfully not the extremely unsavoury one which immediately came to mind.

[cantagalo]

Yes it was.

Got three more lined up this week as well. Maybe I should start some sort of midweek football thread.

[Satchmo Distel]

If the virus is here until Spring 2021 (leaked government doc), next season might be off.

[Patrick Thistle]

Rather think you'll be the only one on it, cantagalo

[Janik]

What's going to happen in countries where contracts finish at the end of May? For example in Turkey. Perhaps that's why they are playing behind closed doors. Last year's play off final was played on May 31st.

In the UK I think contracts are until the end of June, what happens if the leagues have to go beyond that point?

The squads will be radically different for the remaining games, to the point where it would be very questionable to consider it as part of the same competition. Basically an extended delay is insoluble. There is no good answer, it's a case of choosing the least bad one. I'm sticking with my suggestion of voiding the last 9 rounds of matches and going with the league tables as of now as the final ones. Not great, not fair, loses the elegance that deciding things solely by the double round-robin home/away system commonly* used by Football Leagues provides, but it does give a clean restart point in the future when life begins to return roughly to normal.


* - commonly, but not exclusively.
For example, the Scottish Premier League, which splits it's top and bottom halves after 33 fixtures, or a treble round robin. Some teams therefore have 17 home games and some have 16 pre-split as 33 is an odd number that cannot be divided by 2 to give a whole answer. Also the last five games cannot be reliable split up to ensure all teams face those they are playing four times twice each at home and away - sometimes it is necessary to have one team hosting another three times in the season, and only traveling once. cf last season Hibs played Aberdeen 3 times at Easter Road and only once at Pittodrie. Why was that required? Because having that fourth game at Pittodrie would have meant Aberdeen having 20 home fixtures in the season and Hibs only 18! But the structure of the league means that sometimes that is also unavoidable - again a real example in the 2016/17 season when four of the sides that qualified for the top 6 had played 17 home games already. That imbalance cannot be ironed out as every subsequent match has a home team and an away one. That meant one of them (Partick Thistle were selected) had to play an extra home match and got a 20-18 season. And meanwhile, the bottom 6 had four teams that had had just 16 homes games up to the split. Same problem; Ross County were chosen and only got 18 home and 20 away games that campaign.
Then there is the South American method of Apertura and Clausura championships, with the league champion coming from a play-off between the two winners. Same problem of home and away imbalances if your league has 20 teams and therefore 19 rounds of fixtures per championship. And also home advantage in a key match not being counterbalanced by the away one being in the same tournament.
For real weirdness, how about the Dutch 2nd Division. A seemingly sensible league of 18 teams playing 34 games (using the general case as there is a re-arrangement going on this year which is complicating things), with the champions being automatically promoted and six teams going forward to a play-off with the 2nd and 3rd bottom sides from the top flight for the final two top tier places the following season. However the way those play-off teams are selected eschews the double round robin. Instead the season is split into 'periods'. The team top of the table from rounds 1-8 gets a guaranteed place. Then it all resets and a new 'period' table runs from rounds 9-16. And again for 17-25 (9 games as opposed to 8 you will note, as 34 does not divide by 4 to give a whole number!). And finally from 26-34. Those four 'champion' sides, who got that by playing either slightly more or slightly less than half the Division, and at one venue in each case, are joined by the highest finishers from the full double round robin who haven't won a period to make up the six sides. Idiotically, this set up makes it is possible for a side to both qualify for the play-offs for promotion to the top flight and be at the foot of the table and be liable for relegation to the third tier (where there is relegation, which doesn't often seem to be the case) at the same time. This could happen if, say, a side won enough games in period 1 to top that table and then collapsed and lost every remaining fixture.

So, er, you see Football isn't so wedded to the double round robin as it seems. It's a way of organising a league, but not the only one. Just ask American sports, where 'strength of schedule' is a punditry talking point, or Rugby League with it's Game 39 equivalent 'Magic Weekend'. Which, having broken the shibboleth of the double round robin, has since morphed into a 29 game regular season for a league containing 12 teams (i.e. as a standard some teams play each other twice, some face off three times).

[ursus arctos]

The Swiss and German (ice) hockey leagues have each cancelled the season.

No champion, no promotion or relegation. If we are looking at a delay of months, that model and Janik's are the two fairest in my book, though I fear that there will be significant pressure from the television companies for some kind of rock 'em - sock 'em playoffs to allow them to recoup some advertising revenue.

[Gangster Octopus]

TIL Barrow are known as the Ziggers. Apparently after a terrace chant from the 60s, and thankfully not the extremely unsavoury one which immediately came to mind.

You don't remember "Zigger Zagger Zigger Zagger United"?

[Eggchaser]

I see that Mason Mount decided that the best way to follow Chelsea's instructions to self isolate was to have a kick about in the park with Declan Rice.

[Satchmo Distel]

Some kind of handicapped play-offs (higher ranked team plays at home) would normally make sense but the Liverpool gap to 2nd makes them grossly unfair, unless they are just used for that 4th CL slot.

Personally I think they've played enough games for these tables to count as the final ones (and there is already an FA rule using 75% as the threshold for counting the records of clubs who go out of business). And I say this as a supporter of a club that would (deservedly) go down. The top 4 in the EPL has also been quite stable for a while; Man U could have caught Chelsea but have left it very late to find some form.

[elguapo4]

Drogheda United the first club in the league of Ireland to suspend payments to all players and staff.

[Jah Womble]

A very secondary thought amid all this confusion: what happens to the records if the season's scrapped/expunged?

I don't mean league tables as such (that's obvious), but - for example - yer prolific goalscorers, who presumably would have to have their totals re-adjusted to the start of the season? (Which would strike me as a little unfair.)

However, if we don't recognise goals scored in friendlies, then...

[Capybara]

A very secondary thought amid all this confusion: what happens to the records if the season's scrapped/expunged?

I don't mean league tables as such (that's obvious), but - for example - yer prolific goalscorers, who presumably would have to have their totals re-adjusted to the start of the season? (Which would strike me as a little unfair.)

However, if we don't recognise goals scored in friendlies, then...

I can't give a definitive answer but the precedent is the 1939-40 season (three games played before war broke out). I've consulted my Glasper* and there's a note to the effect that it would have been the league debut of one player who turned out for Boro on 2 September but it wasn't because the season was curtailed and he went elsewhere after the war and didn't play for Boro again. He doesn't appear in the list of player appearances section. So, presumably, everything would be scrubbed out.

* Middlesbrough: A Complete Record

[Sporting]

Messi and Ronaldo are shitting themselves.

[Sporting]

The squads will be radically different for the remaining games, to the point where it would be very questionable to consider it as part of the same competition. Basically an extended delay is insoluble. There is no good answer, it's a case of choosing the least bad one. I'm sticking with my suggestion of voiding the last 9 rounds of matches and going with the league tables as of now as the final ones. Not great, not fair, loses the elegance that deciding things solely by the double round-robin home/away system commonly* used by Football Leagues provides, but it does give a clean restart point in the future when life begins to return roughly to normal.


* - commonly, but not exclusively.
For example, the Scottish Premier League, which splits it's top and bottom halves after 33 fixtures, or a treble round robin. Some teams therefore have 17 home games and some have 16 pre-split as 33 is an odd number that cannot be divided by 2 to give a whole answer. Also the last five games cannot be reliable split up to ensure all teams face those they are playing four times twice each at home and away - sometimes it is necessary to have one team hosting another three times in the season, and only traveling once. cf last season Hibs played Aberdeen 3 times at Easter Road and only once at Pittodrie. Why was that required? Because having that fourth game at Pittodrie would have meant Aberdeen having 20 home fixtures in the season and Hibs only 18! But the structure of the league means that sometimes that is also unavoidable - again a real example in the 2016/17 season when four of the sides that qualified for the top 6 had played 17 home games already. That imbalance cannot be ironed out as every subsequent match has a home team and an away one. That meant one of them (Partick Thistle were selected) had to play an extra home match and got a 20-18 season. And meanwhile, the bottom 6 had four teams that had had just 16 homes games up to the split. Same problem; Ross County were chosen and only got 18 home and 20 away games that campaign.
Then there is the South American method of Apertura and Clausura championships, with the league champion coming from a play-off between the two winners. Same problem of home and away imbalances if your league has 20 teams and therefore 19 rounds of fixtures per championship. And also home advantage in a key match not being counterbalanced by the away one being in the same tournament.
For real weirdness, how about the Dutch 2nd Division. A seemingly sensible league of 18 teams playing 34 games (using the general case as there is a re-arrangement going on this year which is complicating things), with the champions being automatically promoted and six teams going forward to a play-off with the 2nd and 3rd bottom sides from the top flight for the final two top tier places the following season. However the way those play-off teams are selected eschews the double round robin. Instead the season is split into 'periods'. The team top of the table from rounds 1-8 gets a guaranteed place. Then it all resets and a new 'period' table runs from rounds 9-16. And again for 17-25 (9 games as opposed to 8 you will note, as 34 does not divide by 4 to give a whole number!). And finally from 26-34. Those four 'champion' sides, who got that by playing either slightly more or slightly less than half the Division, and at one venue in each case, are joined by the highest finishers from the full double round robin who haven't won a period to make up the six sides. Idiotically, this set up makes it is possible for a side to both qualify for the play-offs for promotion to the top flight and be at the foot of the table and be liable for relegation to the third tier (where there is relegation, which doesn't often seem to be the case) at the same time. This could happen if, say, a side won enough games in period 1 to top that table and then collapsed and lost every remaining fixture.

So, er, you see Football isn't so wedded to the double round robin as it seems. It's a way of organising a league, but not the only one. Just ask American sports, where 'strength of schedule' is a punditry talking point, or Rugby League with it's Game 39 equivalent 'Magic Weekend'. Which, having broken the shibboleth of the double round robin, has since morphed into a 29 game regular season for a league containing 12 teams (i.e. as a standard some teams play each other twice, some face off three times).

Fantastically detailed and informative post, by the way. Thanks.

[Sean of the Shed]

Euro 2020 postponed for a year.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/51909518

[Sporting]

Logical and correct.

[ursus arctos]

A very secondary thought amid all this confusion: what happens to the records if the season's scrapped/expunged?

FWIW, the ice hockey leagues that terminated their seasons early have maintained individual records established through the end of play as valid. One reason for doing so was not to call into question performance bonuses that have already been paid.

I believe that the Sheffield Shield (which was just terminated with one round remaining) has taken the same route.

[Jah Womble]

Logical and correct.

Yes, absolutely.

And, by default, there's finally 'some' small merit to holding a winter World Cup in 2022.

[elguapo4]

Obviously it depends on when it's safe to play football again, but say it can restart in the middle of May, you can extend the season until July, and start next season in October

[Satchmo Distel]

This would be easier said than done, but I would say just restart the clock from whenever the sport resumes, just cutting the chaff like friendlies and, yes, Nations League finals. Infact you could cancel the Nations League entirely for one cycle. Maybe in England you cancel the League Cup and EFL Trophy for a year, and condense the FA Cup in some way (no replays)?

[ursus arctos]

One significant complication (which Janik has noted) is that contracts expire in June

[Gangster Octopus]

And, in the non-league world, at the end of April.

[Snake Plissken]

I put something elsewhere that basically read as:

• Cancel Euro 2020
• Resume this "season" and complete it whenever
• Carry on CL and Europa League from where they left off in Q1 2021
• Results for promotion / relegation, CL and Europa League qualification for the tournaments starting summer 2021 are taking from the finishing results this season.
• 2020/21 play a shortened schedule (e.g. 19 or 23 games on a home or away weighted schedule)

Basically, finish the competitions started, consider the 2020/21 season to be expendable, start again in 2021/2022.