(Newswire.net — May 21, 2020) — The English Premier League, Spanish La Liga and Italian Serie A have all been suspended since mid-March due to the COVID-19 pandemic that has caused over 300,000 reported deaths worldwide.
In fact, only Belarus continued their football league season, which has not been disrupted by the virus, aside from fans eventually being banned from stadiums.
All sports across Europe suffered the same fate, though darts in the United Kingdom have managed to continue with players able to compete from their own homes. E-Sports have greatly benefited from this outbreak, gaining more television coverage and popularity over the past two months.
Following the restart of the German Bundesliga and 2. Bundesliga divisions over the past weekend, many fans are now expecting the Europe’s three most popular leagues, in England, Spain and Italy, can all restart and finish their 2019-20 campaigns.
Borussia Dortmund 4-0 Schalke 04 was arguably the most popular game of the weekend that saw all 18 top flight German clubs compete, leaving each with eight games to finish. The remaining schedule is set to finish at the end of June and includes two midweek rounds of fixtures.
Should the Premier League be successful in restarting next month, you can expect many fans viewing flocking to live football streams online given that none of them will be allowed to watch at the stadium, just like in Germany.
In England, the 20 Premier League clubs and league officials agreed on Monday that small group training can start again this week. This was stage one of ‘Project Restart’ but there was no agreement on when the possible restart would be. Friday 12 June has been thrown around with Tottenham Hotspur vs Manchester United one of the key fixtures during the first weekend back.
Spain and Italy are eyeing the same weekend to restart their top flights too, though with nothing concrete in place just yet. Talk coming out of Spain is that La Liga games could take place every day of the week for six weeks to finish the 2019-20 campaign.
Before the season was disrupted two months ago, Barcelona held a two-point lead over Real Madrid with 11 games to go. The second El Clasico of the season is still to be played. Sevilla and Real Sociedad were sitting in the other Champions League spots, narrowly above Getafe and Atletico Madrid.
Italy was originally the hardest hit country in Europe back in March, but the government has started to ease lockdown this month after the number of cases have dropped. Teams had 12-13 fixtures left to play in Serie A prior to suspension, with Juventus one point ahead of Lazio in what was turning into an intense battle for the title.
Brescia, whose city has been devastated by the virus more than any in the country, sits bottom of the table with just 16 points from 26 games – nine adrift of safety.
As Europe starts to get some sort of control over COVID-19 a resumption of their football leagues is starting to look more and more likely, particularly with Germany now having restarted theirs.