Soccer running a big risk

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This article was published 01/05/2020 (2301 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Is it worth it?

That’s the fundamental question world football’s biggest leagues — and all paused or suspended divisions in all sports, for that matter — will have to consider over the next few days and weeks as Europe takes its first, careful steps out of quarantine and slowly restarts its economies.

Already, a handful of less prestigious competitions has responded in the negative.

Belgium’s Jupiler Pro League announced its conclusion a month ago and will rubber stamp the decision on Monday. The Netherlands’ Eredivisie cancelled its schedule last week and, for the first time since the Second World War, entered its off-season without a champion. On Wednesday, France’s Ligue 1 wrapped up its campaign, awarding the title to Paris Saint-German and judging its current standings as final.

An outlier in its verdict to render the season null and void, the Eredivisie will nevertheless provide no shortage of drama going forward as several of its clubs mount legal challenges. And in France, both Amiens and Lyon have threatened to take Ligue 1’s ruling before the courts.

With or without the actual games, football will nevertheless remain in the news in the near term as competition is transferred from the pitch to the docket, with lawyers deputising as players and judges acting as referees.

In England, Germany, Italy and Spain, however, actual games could kick off three weeks from now. It’s worth pointing out that, having taken the opposite approach, France has essentially underlined what everyone already knew: that the “big five” leagues of Europe is really a “big four,” and the big four is determined to complete its seasons.

On Friday, the Premier League clubs “reconfirmed their commitment to finishing the 2019-20 season,” according to a statement released following its shareholders’ meeting. Meanwhile, with Bundesliga sides having resumed training on April 6 — albeit in small, socially-distanced groups — the German top flight could be the first to resume. La Liga players will be able to take coronavirus tests starting Monday, and Serie A clubs, similar to their English counterparts, have presented a united front in their bid to restart the schedule, despite operating in a country hit especially hard by COVID-19.

Once again, and as has been discussed in this space, there remains an unsettling absence of players’ voices, as well as comment from broadcast personnel and matchday support staff, as their employers endeavour to put them back to work.

But at least one footballer spoke out on Friday as the Premier League met to plan what has been dubbed “Project Restart.”

“The majority of players are scared because they have children and families,” remarked Manchester City striker Sergio Aguero, in an interview with Argentine television station El Chiringuito. He added that his teammates were nervous about playing and would be paranoid about the possibility of infection.

Aguero’s comments, his concerns about the pandemic as a worker who may soon be compelled to physically interact with teammates and opponents (no social distancing here) should not be glossed over. Indeed, they should be the primary message as his day-to-day life takes on a not insignificant amount of risk. If he’s saying “the majority of players are scared,” (and how much more the 250-300 people required to put on a professional, televised match) then it’s nothing short of tyrannical to order them back to the stadiums.

Spanish outlet Marca has gone so far as to reveal, using predictive mathematical modelling, the sheer recklessness of football’s rush to resumption. It’s already understood that elite athletes are uniquely susceptible to viruses attacking the immune system (as reiterated in an article published last month by the medical journal The Lancet), and other injury risks would only be exacerbated by the quick succession of matches required to complete a schedule — as many as 11 in 36 days.

The doctors undertaking the Marca study found that expected muscle and limb injuries would increase by as much as 50 per cent, and that spring and summer heat, and the resulting effects on breathing, would make players even more prone to coronavirus infection.

It would only take one infection to halt play for a period of weeks, even months, once again.

For all the important talk about adhering to public health protocols and listening to doctors and scientists — things the general public has mostly done quite well since mid-March — it seems the highest levels of professional football are not only willing but desperate to risk it all.

Is it worth it?

It seems to depend on who’s answering the question. And that’s a pretty good indication that it’s not.

jerradpeters@gmail.com

Twitter @JerradPeters