Now it's official: the Champions League and the Europa League also stop. "In the light of the developments due to the spread of COVID-19 in Europe and the related decisions taken by various governments - reads the official UEFA website - all UEFA club competition matches scheduled for next week are postponed. This includes the remaining UEFA Champions League round of 17 second leg fixtures on 18 and 2020 March 19; all UEFA Europa League round of 2020 first leg matches scheduled for 17 March 18; all matches in the UEFA Youth League, quarter-finals scheduled for 2020 and XNUMX March XNUMX. Further decisions on when these matches will take place will be communicated in due course."
A due act, even more so after the positivity that emerged in the morning from Chelsea's Callum Hudson-Odoi with the consequent quarantine of Ancelotti's Everton, which effectively blocked even the English Premier League, after the already announced suspensions of Serie A, Spanish Liga, French Ligue 1 and Dutch Eredivisie, to which the German Bundesliga will also be added in minutes. But UEFA had already decided what to do yesterday, after that the Coronavirus emergency had widened far beyond football. From basketball (NBA and Euroleague) to tennis (tournaments canceled for the next six weeks), from Formula 1 to Moto GP, all sports had given a signal that Nyon could no longer ignore. This is how the second most important organizational "machine" in the world stops, behind only Fifa, also obviously at the window.
"Following the postponements, the draws for the quarter-finals of the UEFA Champions League and UEFA Europa League scheduled for 20 March have also been postponed," the official statement continued. – UEFA yesterday invited representatives of its 55 member associations, together with the boards of the European Club Association and European Leagues and a representative of FIFPro, at a video conference meeting on Tuesday 17 March to discuss European football's response to the coronavirus outbreak." The text released by Nyon, net of the inevitable bureaucracy, makes it clear that, next Tuesday, we will talk above all about the postponement of the Europeans, at this point almost certain.
Difficult, if not impossible, for Euro 2020 to start regularly on June 12thalso because, even assuming that the emergency is over, there are now too many championships suspended, with inevitable repercussions also on the next editions of the Champions League and Europa League. The only possible way, assuming that Covid-19 allows it (and this, frankly, we all hope so beyond sport), is to extend the seasons until June-July, postponing the European Championship to the autumn or, more likely, to the summer of 2021. This will mean a big economic loss on the part of all the federations, none excluded, but after all the war on the Coronavirus is costing any sector dearly and sport, beyond the extreme attempts to continue, could no longer stay out of it. And if even UEFA and the Premier League understood this, it means that there really weren't any other options.
