Coronavirus in sport

[The Lusophone]

Some of our fans are going to be such cunts over that. 😕 

[GhostMachine]

R.I.P., Tom Dempsey.

[Lineker]

Quote

Fifa has approved plans to extend player contracts and move transfer windows to allow seasons on hold due to coronavirus to be completed.

A set of new guidelines was endorsed by the Fifa bureau – a slimmed-down version of its decision-making council – on Tuesday. These included the recommendation that players’ expiring contracts can be extended beyond the end of June and confirmation that it would permit transfer windows to be put back beyond the end of August and inserted into the gap between this season and its delayed successor.

Transfer deals due to be completed this summer will be “delayed until the next season actually does start”.

Fifa also said it would encourage clubs and players “to work together to find agreements and solutions during the period when football is suspended” and the game has to deal with an unprecedented loss of revenue.

In addressing the practical and logistical issues stemming from the pandemic the world governing body has eliminated legal barriers that would otherwise have made the idea of completing the season untenable.

These temporary solutions were drafted by a task force chaired by a Fifa vice-president, Vittorio Montagliani, and including representatives of clubs, players, leagues, national FAs and continental confederations.

“The Covid-19 pandemic has clearly changed all the factual circumstances around football for this season,” said Gianni Infantino, the Fifa president. “So, Fifa has come up with some practical ideas and proposals to tackle these new circumstances. Whilst this will not solve each and every problem, it should serve to bring a measure of stability and clarity to football. We hope that this collaborative effort can provide a positive example of how football can come together and show unity, solidarity and a spirit of compromise in order to face the challenging times ahead.”

On the thorny issue of pay cuts and wage deferrals, Fifa has advised a spirit of compromise. It advocates “looking at all aspects of each situation in an even handed manner, including what government measures are there to support clubs and players, whether pay should be deferred or reduced and what insurance coverage may exist”.

If agreement is impossible, it will serve as a final arbiter. “If parties cannot agree and, as a consequence, cases come to Fifa, the factors to be examined will include the following: whether there was a genuine attempt by the club to reach agreement with the players; what the economic situation of the club is; the proportionality of any adjustment to player contracts; the net income position of players after any contract adjustment; and whether players have been treated equally or not.

“Fifa hopes that it will be able to find solutions that are fair and balanced for both sides.”

[METALMAN]

There’s going to be a vote on ending the Scottish football league season which is expected to pass. That would mean relegating Hearts, which is a bit unfair given that they’re only four points behind and have eight games left.

Edited April 9, 2020 by metalman

[gunnar hendershow]

I'm of mixed opinion about relegating teams who aren't mathematically relegated.

[Meacon Keaton]

They were just about to start playing better too!

[METALMAN]

Also Hearts were the first UK team whose players volunteered to take pay cuts so the lower paid staff would be okay, so they deserve not to be relegated for being good guys.

[gunnar hendershow]

Well at least their hearts were in the right place.

*Grabs coat*

[gunnar hendershow]

The XFL has shut down and laid off all its employees.

It's easy (and fair) to laugh at Vince for this but man it's a shame for all the players and people working there. The league was probably going to survive had it not been for coronavirus.

[Meacon Keaton]

It may have survived another season, but there isn't, nor has there ever been a need or a desire for a second football league. Arena was niche' enough. But XFL was just football with players that couldn't hack it in the NFL. Just like AAF, just like other leagues that have failed to survive more than a couple years. 

[Your Mom]

Yeah it seemed like it was going much better this time. It's too bad  

[The Kraig]

Vince McMahon must be having an absolute meltdown. The worst ever.

[gunnar hendershow]

 

[GhostMachine]

On 10/04/2020 at 12:45, Meacon say “Hi People!” said:

It may have survived another season, but there isn't, nor has there ever been a need or a desire for a second football league. Arena was niche' enough. But XFL was just football with players that couldn't hack it in the NFL. Just like AAF, just like other leagues that have failed to survive more than a couple years. 

i was a fan of the World League back in the day, but after it became NFL Europe, it started to fall apart.Might as well have been NFL Germany by the end.

We have more than enough of the sport with college, the NFL, Arena (people actually watch that trash?), and some CFL games being broadcast on cable.

When it comes to the CFL, I'm an Argonauts fan.

[Meacon Keaton]

Noted.

[METALMAN]

Please don't insult arena football GhostMachine. My cousin Jinty is a professional arena football player, and sure, there isn't the glitz and glamour of NFL, but focusing on arena football has really helped him to pull his life back together after the fire.

Edited April 14, 2020 by metalman

[Lineker]

Quote

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious diseases expert and one of the faces of the United States' fight against the coronavirus, says the only way professional sports will happen this summer is by holding events without fans in attendance and by keeping players in hotels.

"There's a way of doing that," Fauci told Snapchat's Peter Hamby as part of a weeklong interview series. "Nobody comes to the stadium. Put [the players] in big hotels, wherever you want to play, keep them very well surveilled. ... Have them tested every single week and make sure they don't wind up infecting each other or their family, and just let them play the season out."

Fauci, who specifically addressed a question about an abbreviated baseball season and the start of football, said he thought there would be enough interest from fans to watch games, even if they could not attend.

Major League Baseball and its players have been considering plans that could allow them to start the season in a single location, likely Arizona, with no fans attending, sources told ESPN's Jeff Passan last week. On Tuesday, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey said his state would be willing to host all 30 major league teams if conditions allow for it.

Fauci's comments come a week after 72% of Americans polled by Seton Hall University's Stillman School of Business said they would not attend if sporting events resumed without a vaccine for the coronavirus. Just 13% of Americans said they would feel comfortable attending games the way they had in the past. A second poll this week had a slight plurality, 46% to 36%, saying the NFL season should not open as scheduled in early September.

President Donald Trump, who has regularly received input from Fauci, said Tuesday that he is including figures from the sports world -- including NBA commissioner Adam Silver, Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban -- to help shape his plans to reopen the coronavirus-battered economy.

Fauci noted to Hamby his interest in being able to watch the World Series champion Washington Nationals.

"I want to see them play again," he said.

Two more parts of the Snapchat interview with Fauci are scheduled to be released Thursday and Friday.

A top Bay Area official who predicted sports will not resume before Thanksgiving told ESPN his county's decision will be made by the local health officer -- not the president or the leagues -- and cautioned that more people will die if events are staged too early.

Dr. Jeffrey Smith, the chief executive for Santa Clara County -- home to the 49ers, Sharks and three Division I universities -- said it will take "a major miracle" for the NFL season to begin on time at Levi's Stadium. For sports to resume even without fans, he said, the county will need assurances not only that the coronavirus is contained but that cities where visiting teams live also are following safe distancing.

"It puts the entire country at risk," said Smith, a medical doctor and previously the chief medical officer of another Bay Area county. "The fundamental thing is sports is not a local event. If you have people traveling from all over and you have no way of knowing whether they're infected or not -- I mean, 50,000 of them in a stadium is not a good idea."

Smith's comments highlight the complexities that sports officials will face in trying to bring back live events. The decisions -- and who ultimately makes them -- will depend not only on containment of the virus and the urgency to reopen local economies but also the judgments of thousands of public health officials around the country.

In an interview with ESPN, Smith expanded on his prediction to the Santa Clara Board of Supervisors last week that sports will not return before Thanksgiving. His comments came not long after President Donald Trump held a conference call with league commissioners and said he expects the NFL to start as scheduled. Trump added to reporters, "I want fans back in the arenas."

On Tuesday, Trump announced that all the major sports commissioners and several team owners were among those who would advise him on when to reopen the economy. He said, "We want to get our sports back so importantly. We have to get our sports back."

The question of who ultimately decides when to resume sports comes amid a growing rift between Trump and state governors over who has the authority to reopen the economy. Govs. Gavin Newsom of California and Andrew Cuomo of New York have said the timing on sports would be dictated by health care professionals. Asked about the possibility of the NFL starting its season in August or September, Newsom said, "I'm not anticipating that happening in this state."

Smith said the decision on allowing sports in Santa Clara will be made by the county public health officer, Dr. Sara Cody, who reports to him.

California law authorizes local health officers to "take any action ... necessary to control the spread of the communicable disease."

"Neither the federal government nor the state government have the legal authority to contravene the public health officers," said Smith, who is also a lawyer. "The law was set up very specifically to make the public health officers' decision an apolitical decision."

In an interview, Cody agreed that the decision falls under her authority. She declined to give a specific date for when she believes it will be safe for sports to resume, but she said Smith's assessment was "in the realm of possibility."

"I don't have a crystal ball to know how this pandemic is going to look down the line, but my sense is that we're in it for the long haul," Cody said. "The first thing we put in place was banning mass gatherings, and it's probably the last thing we would resume."

Smith said Trump's call for sports to return as quickly as possible is, "A bad mistake." If sports returned too soon, Smith said, "more people would die. It's just as simple as that."

Andy Baker-White, senior director of state health policy for the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, predicted that questions around the reopening of venues such as stadiums, arenas and restaurants will likely produce "a lot of struggles between local governments, states and the fed.

"It can be kind of an onion to unwrap," he said. "And then you throw politics on top of that. The virus needs people to be in close contact to spread. We need to be cautious in how we come back together. Each layer is going to have its own authority. Ideally, they'd be cooperating and on the same page."

Santa Clara County has been influential in developing strategies to contain the coronavirus. After seeing a spike in cases in mid-March, Cody informed her counterparts in neighboring counties, and collectively they issued the nation's first shelter-in-place order, covering 6.7 million people. The action has been credited with dramatically slowing the disease in the Bay Area.

Cody said the Bay Area's health officers continue to work together and will likely decide issues such as sporting events in unison. That raises questions for the Warriors, the Giants, the A's and Bay Area schools such as Stanford, Cal, San Jose State, Santa Clara, St. Mary's and San Francisco State. "We decided early on we would take a regional approach," Cody said. The San Francisco County health director declined comment, and the director for Alameda County -- home to the A's and Cal -- did not respond to requests for comment.

As Santa Clara County's top executive, Smith made national news last week when he made what seemed like a passing comment during an eight-hour virtual meeting of the board of supervisors: "Sorry to say, I don't expect that we'll have any sports games until at least Thanksgiving, and we'll be lucky to have them by Thanksgiving."

Smith said his projection is based on examining the impact of the lockdown in Wuhan, China, where the virus first appeared. The city, which has 11 million people, recently reopened after 76 days.

"And that was really severe, with a totalitarian government locking down people in their houses, which we're obviously not going to do," Smith said. "So that means probably extending the curve a month or two or even more for us. And even now, we don't have a nationwide shelter-in-place program, so pretty soon you get to six, seven, eight months."

Cindy Chavez, the board president, said she was surprised by Smith's statement. Shortly after, she said, she received a call from the 49ers.

"There were no demands, no this or that," said Chavez, declining to say who contacted her from the team. "It was very simply, 'Did you guys make a formal decision?'"

In response to questions from ESPN, the 49ers pointed to a statement the team released last week: "While there is much debate regarding the appropriate time for the return of sports, our intent is to exercise great patience and make the most informed decisions regarding the health and wellness of all San Francisco 49ers and Levi's Stadium employees, patrons, and the community at large. Our organization continues to collaborate with federal, state, and local health organizations, as well as our League office, to monitor the evolving developments regarding COVID-19."

A Sharks spokesman told ESPN the team will be taking its cues from local health authorities on when to return "to ensure that our fans, players and staff are placed in a safe environment once play resumes."

Chavez said Cody will make the final decision on when to end the shelter-in-place order and allow large gatherings. But she noted that Smith "is not some guy on a corner with a rolled-up newspaper, bellowing. He's a lot more significant than that, and he's reading the numbers."

Supervisor Dave Cortese said he also was caught off-guard by Smith's comments but did not take them lightly.

"Dr. Smith has a lot of credibility right now," said Cortese, a sports fan who previously was general manager of a Continental Basketball Association team. "He's not the public health officer, but he has extensive experience in health care.

"I know everybody is hoping that maybe football season coincides with us winning this fight against COVID, that somehow there's just gonna be this fairy-tale script where we can all get back to normal just in time for the opening kickoff. But I guess [Smith] was trying to say, 'Don't get your hopes up, I need to tell you we're still in dire straits and we might be for a long time.'"

Smith said the same difficult issues will be faced by "every other county or city with a stadium -- they're gonna be at great risk. I'm not an owner, and they never asked me their opinion, but they are not stupid people. I'm sure they realize that if they put their athletes and their fans at risk, they are losing billions of dollars. That means safety is the only option they have."

The NFL season is scheduled to begin Sept. 11. But Smith believes starting earlier than late fall would require "a miracle, like a huge amount of herd immunity that is suddenly found, which is highly unlikely, or an immunization, which is highly unlikely, or a specific treatment, which is highly unlikely."

The NBA announced it was suspending play on March 11, and all other sports followed suit. Since then, the NBA, Major League Baseball and the NHL have been considering a range of scenarios for returning to action, including playing at neutral sites in front of no fans and quarantining players and coaches in hotels for weeks. The NFL will hold a virtual annual draft next week, and late last week, commissioner Roger Goodell said, "The NFL is planning to play. That's our hope, and that's our planning to date."

Goodell has said he believes the NFL "can help our country heal." Smith, though, explained further why he thinks starting the NFL season as scheduled could be a problem.

"The reason why it's flaring up in New York has to do with the fact that people are so close together," he said. "Well, they're not as close together as 50,000 people in a stadium are.

"Let's imagine the 49ers playing a game against the Giants. How many people who come to watch the Giants, who are Giants fans, will be safe and not infected after this entire disaster that's going on in New York? And how many people will feel comfortable going to a stadium with 50,000 people?"

Smith didn't rule out the NFL playing games without fans but said, "It would be pretty risky because of the very close contact among the athletes; you have to consider that everybody on the field is sharing sweat with everybody else, and that puts everybody at risk for being infected."

What if players could be tested regularly?

"The test only tells you what the results are at that particular moment," Smith said. "And we're not just talking about the players. There's all their families, all the groundskeepers and all the support staff and front office staff. So it's hard for me to imagine they would want to put everybody in 24-hour quarantine for the entire season.

"It might be better to just have them play fantasy football on the internet."

[Lineker]

 

[The Buscher]

US Soccer has permanently shut down their Development Academy.

[Colly]