Read any article or listen to any interview or debate in the past couple weeks and you’ll hear one prevailing idea for finishing the English Premier League season currently on hold, “WE MUST FINISH THE SEASON. AT ALL COSTS!”
Famed announcer Ian Darke, Manchester United legend and current Derby County player and Wayne Rooney, and former Liverpool man John Barnes, amongst many others, have all expressed the same sentiment. Former United and England defender Rio Ferdinand disagreed recently, but he appears to be a unicorn in this case.
Why, though? Why must we finish the Premier League? Especially “AT ALL COSTS!”? Will the Earth spontaneously combust into a fireball in space? Of course not.
Teams should get to settle it on the field, as Darke suggested? Sure. But, is playing every single remaining match on the schedule the one and only way to settle it on the field? No. Playoff systems like Liga MX’s Liguilla, mini leagues like how Scotland, Belgium, and Austria end their seasons, and many other scenarios could help see an end to the season. Possibly even a quicker one if time isn’t on the side of the league.
Rooney cited fairness. Yes, leagues operate under a home/away double round robin set up which means without finishing the league, it’s an unbalanced schedule. It’s “unfair” for some. Duly noted.
Is it “fair,” though, to freeze the season in place, yet not freeze rosters? Before the Coronavirus stoppage, Tottenham Hotspur were facing the remainder of the year without forwards Harry Kane, Heung-min Son, and Steven Bergwijn due to injuries. Whenever the league starts up again, though, is it “fair” to other teams fighting for the Champions League places that Spurs will have all their big guns back when they weren’t going to have them had the virus not shutdown the league?
Other teams of course would have players recover as well. But is any team going to see as massive a boost as Spurs?
Fair is subjective. Nothing is ever truly fair for all those involved and it should never be used to make a decision because if it’s fairness you want, you’ll never get it by seeking it.
Every argument to finishing the league has their pros and cons. However, more importantly, they all stem from one central idea. They all want to maintain the integrity of the game. And it makes sense.
Every team began the season under a certain set of rules and expectations. Therefore, the league should finish under those as well. Certainly it’s hard to disagree with wanting the rules to remain the same throughout the competition.
But if these extenuating circumstances, the Coronavirus stoppage, are extraordinary enough to overhaul the entire soccer world - special contracts if the season extends beyond June 30th, readjusting the Euros and Copa America, changing the calendar for European midweeks, World Cup Qualifying, and everything else you can think off - then they should be extenuating enough to make changes to this season one season. And that includes possibly voiding or cancelling the remainder.
Would it truly be easier to change everything else for the next several seasons in order to finish these couple of games and months missed? Seems easier to call it quits now and start over next season with minimal interruptions.
Besides, the Premier League first though about restarting in April. Now, they’ve targeted June for a restart. If time permits, then finishing the season probably is the best option. But waiting until December if necessary, as Barnes suggested, seems absurd. Why purposely cause havoc on the next season, or possibly more, for this year?
It doesn’t make any sense. Only it does, depending on your position.
In the grand scheme of things, this is just another season in the 100+ years of world soccer. It’s just another season of the Premier League. No more special than the previous or the next. Then what is so damn sacred and special about this season specifically that we “must finish at all costs”?
The answer? Nothing. And no. Not even Liverpool’s season is special enough. They lost out on the treble and a Champions League repeat when they crashed out to Atletico Madrid. No double as they fell in both domestic English cups. They won’t become the second Invincibles either as they lost to Watford in the league. They didn’t break the consecutive Premier League wins record either.
This isn’t to take anything away from Liverpool. They certainly are a magnificent team. But in truth, nothing makes Liverpool’s season so incredibly special anymore.
They may get 100 points? Sure. But Manchester City just did that. Just as eating your favorite food isn’t as fun if the last time you ate it was yesterday as opposed to 10 years ago. It’s nice, but it doesn’t carry the same meaning for Liverpool as the second team to hit that milestone in three years.
Liverpool are about to win their first Premier League title and first league title in 30 years? So what. Plenty of clubs have had long waits for league titles.
In all honesty, only two entities NEED this season to end so Liverpool can win the title. First, Reds fans, of course. But the other? The media. More specifically the broadcasters.
NBC in America and Sky Sports and BT in the UK need Liverpool to win the title. They need the story of “Current European Champions Liverpool, one of the biggest clubs in the world and arguably the best team in the world, are on a quest for Premier League glory for the first time. They’ve been waiting for a league title for 30 years. This is THEIR year.”
The broadcasters need this story. They need games to show on TV. Because without games, without these stories pumped full of steroids, TV companies die.
Broadcasters have been getting crushed in recent years due to cord cutting. And now, the Coronavirus has taken away the one and only reason any remaining consumers still have TV subscriptions. But if there’s no sports on TV, there is no more reason for TV.
Without sports, and specifically soccer as the world’s game, these broadcasters will go bust. Granted, they’re part of larger conglomerations and will survive in that sense, but can they survive for three months, six months, or even longer with customer subscriptions on pause, like Sky Sports is offering?
Subscriptions are locked in via contracts, but without the games on TV and eyeballs on the games, advertising revenue has taken a hit. Without revenue, can they meet payroll for their employees?
That’s why you see this big push of “WE MUST FINISH AT ALL COSTS!” Who broadcasts the games? NBC, Sky, and others. Who does pre and post game shows? The same. Who has paid billions upon billions for the rights to show games, but now have nothing to show and no way of making any money? You already know the answer.
No one NEEDS this season to end except the broadcasters. Under the guise of “fairness” or “integrity of the sport and season,” broadcasters and their pundits have been tossing out a self-serving narrative, yet portraying it as beneficial to the game, to the team, and to the fans.
But it couldn’t be further from the truth. Former Man United defender Gary Neville said on Sky Sports recently “If football players need to play everyday for nine days to finish the Premier League as a worst case scenario, they would do it.”
And while Neville’s probably right in terms of most players’ feelings on the subject, playing nine games in nine days? That’s more grueling than the World Cup. Playing twice in three days during the Christmas period gets derided every year as “dangerous” for players.
Yet now it’s okay to have teams playing everyday, either seriously putting their players at risk of injury or rotating players every match and having your strongest XI out there for at most three of the nine matches? That maintains sporting integrity? How? Where?
This isn’t meant to single out Neville. Any idea close to his is just as low on the integrity scale. But playing nine times in nine days is just as farcical as voiding or cancelling the season. Finishing the season “just because” isn’t any better a solution or reason. How is a system no one would ever approve of, playing everyday for over a week, any better?
Oh, it’s just an idea to finish this season because of the extenuating circumstances and next year or any other year it wouldn’t be considered? It’s just for this year? Okay. Then the same for a playoff, canceling the year, or voiding it. They are also ideas for extenuating circumstances during extraordinary times.
Broadcasters as a whole and the individuals saying “we must finish at all costs” most likely truly believe what they’re saying and proposing is the best solution. I don’t believe they’re nefariously misleading the public for their own gain. They are, though, proposing a self-serving idea as the only righteous one.
So, when it comes to it, the answer is “no.” We don’t have to finish the season at all costs. Especially not if those who stand to gain the most, particularly when their survival is on the line, are the only ones proposing any ideas and they’re screaming it from the high heavens claiming the moral high ground.