Belgium gets it right

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This article was published 03/04/2020 (2330 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Ruud Vormer celebrated Club Brugge’s presumptive Jupiler Pro League title in his living room, wearing a hoodie, doing interviews on Skype.

Were it not for the distinctive Golden Shoe in the cabinet behind him, and perhaps a mostly clean-shaven face, he might have passed for any number of men currently staying home to wait out the worst of the coronavirus.

Asked if he would at least pop a bottle of bubbly, the club captain told VTM Nieuws he would wait until the next day, so he wouldn’t have to mark the occasion alone. Roos America, Vormer’s wife and an emergency room doctor, was working the late shift. On the front lines of the battle against COVID-19, she wouldn’t have even known her husband was a champion of Belgium, not that football much matters in these unusual times.

It’s a reality the Belgian football authorities seem to grasp better than their European peers, or global counterparts in general. Football, they quite clearly understand, is not coming back anytime soon. And so, they figure, what’s the point in dragging on the currently-suspended season, of putting off what in all likelihood will be an eventual forced conclusion or even cancellation?

It’s only a season. It’s only games in a schedule.

“The country has other priorities than football,” stated Pro League president Peter Croonen on Thursday, shortly after announcing that the top flight table as of last month’s suspension would represent the final standings. “Next season,” he told Sport.de, “should not be affected by the current one. Stopping the competition now will bring clarity and show that the football family is part of what is socially desirable and logical.”

At issue now is whether the Belgian approach will be adopted throughout the continent. UEFA, the body that oversees football in Europe, remains adamant that competitions be settled “on the field,” a position it underlined in an email circulated just hours after the Pro League decision. The missive, as per The Associated Press, also contained a not-so-subtle threat: “UEFA reserves the right to assess the entitlement of clubs to be admitted to the 2020-21 UEFA club competitions, in accordance with the relevant applicable competition regulations.”

In other words, UEFA could block Belgian clubs — in this case ostensibly Club Brugge and Gent — from participating in the Champions League.

At this point it’s important to emphasize that although Croonen has declared the preferred outcome of the Pro League’s board of directors, the conclusion reached Thursday was not unanimous. To that end, a task force has been struck to advise the board on how to proceed regarding play-offs and cup competitions. After 30 matches — 29 have been played so far — Belgium’s top six sides contest a separate competition to determine the title winners and Champions League berths. A system of group stages and play-offs settles the Europa League positions. The task will reveal its recommendations on April 15.

Croonen, however, has indicated that he has the 80 per cent support necessary to judge the current table — first through-sixteenth — as final, meaning that the title, the European places and the relegation spot are to be established as they presently appear.

Acknowledging the possibility of legal challenges, Croonen added that the task force would find, “as far as possible, solutions that could avoid” such scenarios.

From a purely sporting perspective, what Belgium is doing is certainly not ideal. But at least it’s doing something, and by all accounts for all the right reasons.

The same cannot be said of UEFA, which further dug in its heels on Friday. Speaking to ZDF, the organization’s president, Aleksander Ceferin, reiterated his opinion that the Pro League’s decision was a flawed one, lecturing that “solidarity is not a one-way street.” He added: “You cannot ask for help and decide for yourself what is most comfortable for you.”

It’s not apparent exactly what help the Belgians have asked for, if any, but it’s disturbing in the extreme that the most powerful administrator in European football would seem to favour the Belarussian league’s continued operation — enabled by outright COVID-19 denial — over sincere intent to protect public health.

Ceferin also referenced a July-August window for concluding domestic and European competitions — an aspirational assessment that looks more and more unlikely by the day. Still, his remarks will have comforted English football’s decision-makers. Various reports have had the Premier League re-starting in World Cup-style camps under a compressed schedule in June or, as if such a half-baked idea was needed right now, transplanting the division to China.

“Football is not the same thing without fans,” Ceferin admitted. “But it is definitely better to play football without fans and get it back on television, rather than nothing.”

Is it, though? And what of the sport’s workforce? Do players, coaches, peripheral staff and TV personnel share UEFA’s stance?

Probably not, although Ceferin & Co. are no doubt more concerned about the loss of broadcast revenue — such is already happening in France’s Ligue 1 — than the wellbeing of employees. Incidentally, Denis Le Saint, owner of Ligue 1 minnows Stade Brest, has called for a Belgium-style conclusion to the division, telling France Football that “in order of priorities, (football) does not come first; it does not come second, but well after.”

Similarly, Brescia owner Massimo Cellino — whose side is bottom of the standings — has said the Biancazzurri will forfeit matches if Serie A restarts, “out of respect for the citizens of Brescia and their loved ones who are no longer there.”

The cracks are showing in UEFA’s presumed “solidarity,” and thank goodness for that.

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If anything, Belgium’s break from a UEFA consensus that never existed should lead the way for European football, world football and maybe even sports in general. As Croonen has acknowledged, “these are exceptional circumstances” that require “exceptional decisions that act in the public interest.”

Vormer, for his part, will still get to uncork the champagne. But he’ll do so when Roos, the real champion of the moment, returns from her shift. And everyone, in these unusual times, can raise a glass to that.

jerradpeters@gmail.com

Twitter @JerradPeters