Football is coming back. The green light has been given for the Premier League to return on 17 June, when Aston Villa will play Sheffield United and Manchester City will play Arsenal, ahead of everyone else beginning thereafter. Those four teams have a game in hand and it will balance out the table ahead of trying to proceed to the finish line. Great news then for Liverpool fans, for while null and void has been dead in the water for some time, the idea of the season being cancelled and winning it on points-per-game, and not on the pitch, was hard to stomach.
If everything stays on track, if the number of new cases continues to fall and if there is no second spike in Coronavirus, then the season should be concluded through June and July. No Euro 2020, but Liverpool winning the title instead almost feels like an upgrade to me!
Of course, the restart won’t quite be back to normal. Kicking off 100 days after it all fell apart, is a weird gap in the season, and it will be concluded behind closed doors. Every game will be televised, but no fans will be allowed in. It will be an odd look and it will take some getting used to. The truth is, football is not the same without fans. The game may be returning, but football won’t come back until the fans do too.
But given the circumstances, it is better than nothing, and I am excited. Lockdown has been alright for me. I’ve spent time with my family in a way I never will again when work resumes properly and schools too. But I have missed turning the television to watch football. It is the escape that so many have in life; that takes them away from the real world for a while. For so long I watched the news on TV, but it was the same stuff day after day, and after a while you felt like you were learning nothing new. Facts and information was sporadic, yet the news continued to churn out stories. And there was no sport to turn to for a while. Now there will be.
Empty stadiums or not, it will still be better than the repetition of the news.
Players across the league will be tested several times a week and they will be limited in their dealings with the outside world. Anyone who does test positive will be isolated right away. Regular testing should allow them to track and trace the virus within the players and staff and should allow for a safe return. With all this in place, and numbers falling, it is hard to see how it won’t work out. If many other people are starting to return to work now and if there is continued movement towards opening things up, then why should the Premier League be any different?
So what can we expect from Liverpool? Who knows, if truth be told. They went into lock down on a run of poor form by their standards. They went out of the FA Cup (with a weakened squad) and crashed out of the Champions League in surprising fashion. They also lost their first league game of the season to Watford. Will the break allow what might have been a team starting to tire, the chance to rest and recover and come back fresh and ready to prove a point? Or will they come back aware that they are two wins from glory, with nothing else to play for, and so a little over confident? Will the poor form be in their heads as things get going again or will they be excited to stamp their authority on a season they have dominated with regards to the league? We wait and see, but I think it is obvious which I am hoping it will be.
As I write this they are now back in training and trying to do so with a semblance of social distancing. Yet if the testing process is working out, there should be no risk of the players mingling together. No doubt about it, they will be anxious and desperate to get back out and playing again. The time off is longer than the average off-season in many ways, yet this time they are coming back to a fresh start, but to finish the job that has been left undone. That frustration in not getting to finish it in April and May will have bubbled across the stoppage. And while the usual summer break affords the players time to switch off, go on holiday and rest up from a long and full season, this gap has had them stay at home, try to stay fit and wait for the season to become full again.
Liverpool’s first match back will be against Everton, and I can only hope they will come flying out like caged birds set free and ready to show what they are best at. You could argue that Everton will want to do the same, but Liverpool have a real point to prove. And that is that had the season been cancelled, that Liverpool were indeed the best team in the country, that at the time of the stoppage their title was a foregone conclusion and nobody could doubt them being given the title. In winning from the re-start gun here, they will show that and then they can earn that title in a way never seen before.
I say ‘against’ Everton, because right now a lot is still up in the air. Will the games be played at the respective grounds? I this case, Goodison Park? Or will neutral venues be used? There is talk that for high profile matches, the neutral venues could be a safer option, but from what? People gathering outside? And why certain fans more than others? That would skew the balance of the season should some teams play in neutral grounds while others don’t. I think if the season is coming back and they don’t want to use ‘hub’ cities to hold the games, then everyone should play in their home stadium and fans should be trusted to do the right thing. It’s easy to assume football fans will do the worst, yet there is no reason to believe this will happen. If anything they will prefer to stay home and watch it on the television where they can actually see it. They won’t be off to the beach to gather in large numbers either as has been seen by many in the UK.
So, the game is returning to our lives once more. That can only be seen as good news. Not only for us football fans and for me as a Liverpool fan desperate to see them get over this long drawn out finishing line, but for society in general. Because if it is now safe enough to have things like football restart, then we must be heading in the right direction again.
Always Next Year 