Upcoming season will be like no other

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This article was published 22/07/2022 (1484 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The upcoming European club football season will be, shall we say, different.

For the first time, its league schedules will be interrupted for more than a month by the FIFA World Cup, the consequences of which will include fixture congestion, player injuries and doubtless further outcomes we’ve not yet even considered.

Combine the awkwardly-timed tournament with the ramifications of the global pandemic — many of which are also still to be learned — and a coincidental state of flux among some of the continent’s biggest clubs and you get the sense of, if not panic, at least the anxiety of this rather unique campaign.

Needless to say, questions abound. And the manner in which they’re addressed will have a lot to do with the look of the landscape when the dust finally settles.

Here are some of them.

How are Barcelona…functioning?

For a club without any money — apparently — the Catalan giants are spending like kings. Back-to-back Golden Shoe winner Robert Lewandowski was signed this week for €45 million, and he joins a remade outfield including Raphina, Franck Kessie and Andreas Christensen among its newcomers. But they still need to be registered before La Liga’s schedule kicks off in three weeks. To do it, and to comply with the Spanish top flight’s wage rules, or limite salarial, they’ve activated two economic levers, or palancas, by selling future TV income to a third party. If it all comes off and the registrations go through, Barcelona will be back in contention for the title. If it doesn’t, they’ll once again face the embarrassment of failing to submit the entirety of their squad.

Can Erik ten Hag restore respectability at Manchester United?

The early returns are encouraging. On the pitch, the incoming Red Devils boss has his players pressing, passing and moving like a modern football team. Finally. Off it, he’s installed a disciplinary regime befitting a club with serious ambitions. The additions of Tyrell Malacia, Lisandro Martinez and Christian Eriksen also point to a new, promising direction. But it’s only preseason, and ten Hag still has to deal with a laundry list of issues including unpopular captain Harry Maguire, the Frenckie de Jong transfer saga and AWOL talisman Cristiano Ronaldo. Speaking of whom…

Where will Cristiano Ronaldo play this season?

Ten Hag has yet to speak with the five-time Champions League winner and admitted on Friday that he doesn’t know when the 37-year-old — still training alone in Portugal — will join up with his United teammates. Given that Ronaldo is widely considered to be the sport’s all-time leading goal-scorer, it’s a rather strange, even uncomfortable, scenario. And embarrassing, too, as nobody seems to want him. Perhaps not even United, where ten Hag has established himself as the club’s most powerful figure. Nevertheless, at some point this season Ronaldo will play football somewhere. And wherever it is, he’ll both unsettle the existing squad and score a boatload of goals.

Will Paris Saint-Germain finally win the Champions League?

If ten Hag is a disciplinarian, Christophe Galtier is a drill sergeant. The new PSG supremo, who guided Lille to an unlikely Ligue 1 title in 2021, has brought a strict set of rules to the capital. For example, players who don’t report for training by 8:45 a.m. will be sent home, and meals are to be taken as a team — with no phones allowed. If Les Parisiens were run as something akin to a country club in recent years, well, those days are done. This is now an operation with a single objective: to win the Champions League. And with Lionel Messi out of contract in June and Neymar turning 31 mid-season, there’s a sense that time is running out. It’s Galtier’s job to combine that urgency with the immense talent at his disposal and turn it into campaign that deliver’s the club’s most sought-after prize.

Can anyone dislodge the Manchester City-Liverpool duopoly?

They’ve combined to win the last five Premier League titles—four of them, mind you, by Manchester City. Liverpool, for their part, have lifted every trophy available to them since 2019, and the 2022 championship was decided on the final day of the season. Can either club be stopped? Despite the exits of Fernandinho, Gabriel Jesus and Raheem Sterling, City is likely still the presumptive favourite and have added Erling Haaland and Kalvin Phillips. Liverpool lost Sadio Mane to Bayern Munich but replaced him with Benfica’s Darwin Nunez. Given the gap the two outfits left between themselves and their rivals last term, it’s hard to foresee anything other than another two-horse race. That is, unless Chelsea rein them in. The Blues can probably make the best case for a new champion. They lured Sterling from City and pulled off a masterstroke in signing Napoli defender Kalidou Koulibaly.

Whither the world’s richest club?

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When considering the wealthiest entities in world football, no doubt PSG and Manchester City spring to mind, and then there are traditional powerhouses such as Real Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Manchester United. But it’s Newcastle, controversially owned by the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia, that tops the list. And the Saudi cash has already made a difference. The Magpies lost only five of their 19 Premier League matches in 2022 and finished a respectable 11^th. Earlier this month they made a statement signing when Sven Botman agreed a £35 million transfer from Lille, and more will surely follow. PSG and City, in particular, transformed themselves with considerable resources that were largely well invested. Now, Newcastle isn’t about to win the title anytime soon, although a berth in the Europa League is surely a reasonable target this season.

How will the World Cup affect, well, everything?

Europe’s top leagues are already starting slightly earlier than usual to accommodate an autumn World Cup. They’ll release participating players on November 14 (the competition begins a week later) and with the exception of the Bundesliga will resume shortly after the December 18 Final in Lusail. England-based players will have the tightest schedules, with two domestic cup competitions and the resumption of the Premier League on Boxing Day. Ligue 1 will follow on Dec. 28, then La Liga on New Year’s Eve and Serie A on Jan. 4. The German top flight is the anomaly with a restart date of Jan. 20. Player fatigue and injuries are the obvious consequences of the fixture jam, and there’s an argument to be made that mid-table sides with few or no players in Qatar will be able to create tighter league tables than usual. Germany’s winter break will almost certainly benefit that country’s entries in the Champions League knockout stages.

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