The game’s great dilemma is squaring the need for rich backers – no matter how unpalatable – with our longing for a football fix
It has been another week of soul-searching for football. What is the game, what is it for and who does it belong to? With nine Premier League matches postponed in the past week and Dr Nikki Kanani, medical director of primary care for NHS England, suggesting that attending games is a needless risk, a return to reduced attendances, closed-doors matches or even a suspension have become distinct possibilities.
The return to Project Restart protocols may be enough to quell the spread of the virus among players but if it is not, keeping going cannot be justified. Brentford’s Thomas Frank has already called for a circuit-breaker but potentially pushing the end of the season into the summer is not easy because of the truncated close-season to accommodate a November World Cup. In football, as in so many other spheres, the pandemic has exposed the dangers of greedy short-termism and bodge-job solutions to systemic problems.
