The Premier League couldn’t have waited much longer with the cancellation of the league game between Aston Villa and Burnley FC on Saturday. Only two and a half hours before the start of the game at 3 p.m. did the decision-making body of the highest English football company agree to postpone the game “due to further positive corona cases” because Aston Villa would now no longer have enough professionals available to provide a team.
The league organization could of course have come to this assessment earlier after Steven Gerrard, coach of the middle-class club from Birmingham, announced on Tuesday that numerous players and employees of the club had been infected with Corona before the game at bottom of the table Norwich City (2-0) a training session had to be canceled. Instead, the Premier League tried, as is so often the case, to push through the match regardless of losses – until Villa reported an increased number of positive results to the committee on match day after the next series of tests.
With the short-term cancellation, the league board, who once again played for a limited period, did himself no favors. The difficult to understand procedure led to an outcry on the island, because in addition to both clubs and their fans, the broadcasting television stations were affected. Around 2000 ticket holders from Burnley had already undertaken the three-hour journey to Central England by this time. The Premier League only apologized for the complications with a cool sentence to the fans.
No mention was made of the inconvenience for the television rights holders. The normally 80-minute long, wide-coverage round-up of the day of the game on Saturday evening by the BBC, for example, was reduced to half an hour at prime time. On Twitter, the former world-class attacker Gary Lineker, who hosts the BBC program “Match of the Day”, quipped, based on the Queen hit “Another one bites the dust”, that “another game” had gone would be – and enjoyed the fact that there would at least be no discussion among the audience as to which game would be shown first. The only thing left on Saturday was Leeds United against Arsenal (1: 4).
A steward checks a fan’s Covid pass before the game between Leeds and Arsenal – the only game that took place on Saturday.
(Photo: Lindsey Parnaby / AFP)
After three Corona-related cancellations on the last day of the game, the Premier League has now even had to remove six of the ten matches from the program this weekend. In the three lower-class professional leagues, more than half of the games could not take place as planned. Responsible for this are the rapidly increasing corona infections in the United Kingdom, which of course also affect players and coaches who are absent from their clubs for at least ten days of quarantine after a positive test.
The vaccination rate among players in the English league is low
Especially since the vaccination rate among the professionals in the Premier League is reportedly far behind that of other European leagues. While more than 90 percent of the professionals in Germany, France, Italy and Spain are said to have been vaccinated, the proportion on the island was only 68 percent two months ago – and is said to have increased marginally since then. A few days ago, Southampton coach Ralph Hasenhüttl complained that the number of unvaccinated players was “too high”. On Friday and Saturday, over 90,000 people in Great Britain were infected with the virus, a record that is sometimes due to the particularly rapid spread of the Omikron variant. English football as a whole has become a victim of its own failures and of the British government around Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
Despite the impending wave of infections weeks ago, Parliament opted for the risky strategy of leaving the general public largely alone with the virus. Even in the previous week, when the corona numbers shot up, the government stuck to its lax restrictions. Ironically, the Premier League was even considered to be one of the beneficiaries of the barely existing regulations, because the clubs are still allowed to play in full stadiums. The turnover on matchday already amounts to millions of euros due to the viewer income for the clubs.
The league board can still decide “on a case-by-case basis”
Similar to most politicians, however, the lax handling of the situation of the chronically sluggish league is now falling on its feet: Without essential precautions, the viruses seem to have spread in so many clubs by now that regular game operations can hardly be maintained. Even the Corona regulations of the Premier League on possible postponements have not changed since the start of the season. “Exceptional circumstances” are still the yardstick for any postponements. The league board reserves the right to judge “on a case-by-case basis” and on the basis of “a number of factors”.
This formulation, which can be stretched in every direction, is already leading to protests by mutually distrusting associations who demand rigor and verifiability of the decisions. Jürgen Klopp spoke out loudest as the coach of Liverpool FC by demanding disclosure of the corona-infected players in the league. “Why are we hiding the players?”, Klopp exclaimed: “Nobody knows the number, it always says: ‘Some employees, some players.’ Says what’s going on – and everyone can understand. “
There is a break in play – but catch-up dates are tight
On Monday, the Premier League summoned the captains, coaches and club bosses to an emergency meeting. In this meeting, a temporary break in play (“firebreaker”) should be discussed. Some of the clubs that were heavily affected by Corona let it be known that they were not averse to the proposal. However, the interests of the clubs also diverge here because there are almost no free dates until the end of the season, especially for the internationally involved top clubs, on which games can be made up. Klopp said he saw “no great use” because after a possible interruption the situation in the world would “still” be the same. Regardless of this, the clubs would have to pay dearly for such a period of rest, because the TV rights holders would probably sue for compensation for the failed games at Christmas, which usually generate particularly good audience ratings.
How the meeting with the clubs will ultimately end is uncertain in terms of content. What is certain, however, is that the Premier League will probably not delay this decision until two hours before the start of the next match day, Boxing Day on Boxing Day.