Football faces endless conundrums when the game finally restarts | Ed Aarons


The coronavirus crisis has instilled a spirit of unity among football’s leaders – but the sport’s calendar has been shredded

As Gareth Southgate put it so eloquently, this is hardly the moment for football to take centre stage. Yet after a week in which almost all of the sport’s global calendar was suspended amid the growing coronavirus pandemic, England’s manager can be forgiven for wondering if what Pelé described as the “beautiful game” will ever recover from this crisis.

Thursday’s joint announcement by the Football Association, the Premier League and the EFL that the provisional date of the first weekend in April for the resumption of men’s and women’s professional football had been pushed back almost a month until “no earlier than 30 April” confirmed the worst for many clubs and supporters in Britain.

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