Premier League emerges from lockdown changed but bringing hope
Matches without atmosphere will be strange but making the best of a bad situation is better than leaving the game behind
David Hytner
The Guardian - Sun 14 Jun 2020
Most people can pinpoint the moment when it became real, the hot flush of panic when it dawned that coronavirus was not some far-off threat but rather one heading to our doorsteps, quickly, inexorably, hellbent on destruction.
For English football, it came during the week that began with Leicester’s 4-0 Premier League drubbing of Aston Villa on Monday 9 March and moved through Liverpool’s Champions League elimination at the hands of Atlético Madrid on the Wednesday. What an uncomfortable night that was at Anfield, thousands of diehards wanting to be there but, in their hearts, wondering why they had been allowed. Was it really safe?
In Madrid, parents had been prevented from sending their children to school and elsewhere in Europe, notably Italy, people screamed for England to go inside and turn the key. Still, around 3,000 Madrileños made the trip to Liverpool, many via London. It would be a last, foolhardy act of defiance.
When the Arsenal manager, Mikel Arteta, tested positive the following night, the speed of the unravelling was extraordinary, the mounting anxiety suddenly prompting the inevitable. There would be no football for some time.
In the fear and claustrophobia of lockdown, the simplest pleasures have brought heightened sensations. A walk in the park, a ray of sunshine. Everybody has craved release and football fans have missed their teams. You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. The adage touches with precision. So how good will it be to welcome back the Premier League when Aston Villa host Sheffield United on Wednesday at 6pm – the start of a feast of action?
The Bundesliga has been fun, a little like the group stage of a World Cup. You watch it because it is on and it is nice to discover new players, but has it stirred the passions? There is a difference between following a game as a neutral, however high-quality and entertaining, and watching your team. Only the true fan can feel it. And those people are about to feel it again.
To say the Premier League is coming back with a bang is an understatement. After the longest postponement of competition since the second world war, there will be matches virtually every day, at various time slots, until the end of next month.
It will all be televised with, happily, 33 of the 92 games on free-to-view platforms. If the title is a foregone conclusion, with Liverpool set to win for the first time since 1990, there is much to play for elsewhere. The race for Champions League qualification could include the clubs down to Burnley and Crystal Palace in 10th and 11th – if Manchester City’s looming suspension from the competition is upheld next month – while the bottom six fight to avoid relegation.
In a changed world, it will be a changed game and it is impossible to dress up the lack of fans inside stadiums as anything other than wholly unsatisfactory. The atmosphere at matches is better in other European countries, most notably Turkey and Greece, but, as Arsène Wenger notes, there is no place like England for the way that supporters “respond to what’s happening on the pitch”.
All players have played behind closed doors or in front of sparse crowds. It happens in pre-season or sometimes at clubs during international breaks. Last season, there was a training ground game between England’s seniors and the under-21s at St George’s Park. It will also take players back to their days in the reserves.
But there is a difference between those occasions and the high stakes of a Premier League showdown. Although the motivation must come primarily from within, players do feed off the energy of a crowd. “The adrenaline is from the fans,” says Mark Noble, the West Ham captain.
No home support equals no home advantage. That is the theory and it has been interesting to see the high number of away wins in the Bundesliga. Home comforts do have to be considered: factors such as familiarity with the facilities, the dimensions of the pitch, the surface, the sight lines. Travel time is also cut down. But the biggest thing is the noise from the crowd, how they can lift the home players and intimidate the visitors, not to mention putting pressure on the referee.
There is an argument that the absence of fans brings a purity to the technical contest, getting us closer to the idea that the better team will win, although that is to neglect mentality – one of the game’s key and most fascinating areas.
The spectacle will take some getting used to and it will certainly be a weird moment when Jordan Henderson hoists aloft the championship trophy to a backdrop of empty plastic seats. It must be added that nothing ought to detract from Liverpool’s achievement this season. They have been thrilling and remorseless.
But in testing times it often comes down to the least-bad solutions, of best mitigating the risks and what has been decided is better than no solution at all, to the industry remaining in cold storage and possibly going under as nothing comes in and costs continue to go out. As it is, the damage to clubs has been severe, particularly to those further down the pyramid.
Make no mistake, money has driven the Premier League restart. The sums are stark. Complete the season and lose at least £330m in rebates to broadcasters unhappy at the altered delivery of the product; do not complete it and lose £762m to them.
Then, there has been the fear that clubs who felt wronged by curtailment – most likely the relegated ones or those denied promotion from the Championship – would seek recourse via the courts and this, again, comes back to money.
Preserving the integrity of the competition by finishing it is a wholesome thought. Preserving the integrity of various bank accounts is more compelling. It is easy to get upset by the naked capitalism but the main thing for the league to show has been that it would not affect the public’s health and safety – in other words, it would not deny tests and resources to the NHS and other frontline workers. It has managed to do this. Its twice-weekly testing programme is independent.
It has been a journey, taking in numerous conference calls and differences of opinion. There was the back-and-forth over player wage-cuts or deferrals, which was clumsily pressed by the league and compounded by “the thing with the politician”. Matt Hancock, the health secretary, thought “the first thing Premier League footballers can do is make a contribution, take a pay cut and play their part”. It went down badly with the players – why always them? – but at least the government would later show there were no hard feelings when it urged them to return to the field for national morale.
The self-interest of the clubs has been an inevitable feature, whether over the blocking of police proposals for neutral venues or the perception that some wanted various concessions and others different ones in direct correlation to their league position. Hence the restarters versus the null-and-voiders; the supporters of the status quo versus the scrappers of relegation.
The players have needed to be reassured over their safety and they have been won over. The back-to-play protocols have been robust and José Mourinho said he and his Tottenham squad could not “ask for more than the authorities are giving us, which is maximum security”. One executive at a major club told his players there were 71 Covid-19 deaths in March and April for men aged 15-34 and 81% of those had underlying health conditions. So, at the peak of the pandemic, according to his statistics, there were 13 deaths among men of equivalent age and health to a footballer.
A gaggle of covidiots in the game have attracted negative attention for lockdown breaches but the charitable efforts of the vast majority of managers and players have been really something, showing humility and generosity, and helping to remind people these superstars are simply normal lads.
Barriers have been broken down, the distance between player and fan does seem shorter and the thought, on the eve of the big return, is that respect can endure and the extremes of tribalism can soften.
The Premier League has not always been easy to love. Right now, it represents optimism.
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