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Coronavirus latest: Premier League return in June being reported ahead of latest meeting of clubs on April 3

By Sporting Life
17:21 · SUN March 22, 2020

Reports of a plan for the Premier League to return on June 1 have been largely rubbished as wishful thinking as football has been accused of being in denial.

While the country is heading towards a complete lockdown and the worst of the coronavirus pandemic is said to be coming, reports in the media on Sunday claimed that one plan on the table involved a return to Premier League football as early as June 1.

The plan, as reported in the Telegraph, suggested a six-week blitz of football, all behind closed doors, to get the entirity of the 2019/20 season completed by July 11 with the aim starting the new season on time on August 8.

Football is currently suspended until April 30 at the earliest, but all the indication are that the worst is yet to come in terms of COVID-19 spreading across the country, and the reported plan to start in June has been met with some scepticism.

The Premier League and EFL have both agreed to delay the current season indefinitely, and the wide consensus is that the 2019/20 season must be completed before the new season can get underway - regardless of how long that takes.

Football in denial

These proposed plans of returning in June have seemingly no chance of coming to fruition, according to several journalists appearing on Sky Sports' Sunday Supplement.

"Our leagues, and football in general, is still in a little bit of denial about what is going on," Oliver Holt told the Sunday Supplement.

"There is an element of people trying to keep up their morale here but, in reality, these ideas of playing behind closed doors in a few weeks' time are not going to happen. The timeframes we are looking at are several months until there is a chance of football coming back.

"This is moving so fast. We are getting to grips with and realising we are at the beginning of this, not anywhere near the end and things are going to get worse. Pretty soon football is going to have to stop giving these dates and accept that this is going to be a long hiatus."

The date of June 30 has also been put forward as a date leagues across Europe have vowed to complete their domestic campaigns by, before matters like player contracts and season TV deals start to complicate things even further.

No chance of June 1 start

However, according to Henry Winter, football is looking at a far longer wait before it can get back underway.

"There has been a briefing or suggestion that they were going to try and get the Premier League up and running by June 1, so they could then finish it, have a short break and then go into a new season," Winter added. "That is simply not going to happen.

"A colleague I know at the NHS has said it is wishful thinking for football to even consider playing before the middle of October.

"The Prime Minister has said we are two or three weeks behind Italy, who had 800 deaths on Saturday. We are staring into an absolutely horrific situation.

"I admire what the football authorities are trying do in trying to get this season completed, they are right to do that, but the idea that football can go back by June 30 is so ambitious - you cannot put a date on this.

"You cannot have an ambulance waiting outside a football ground in case someone breaks their leg when the NHS are dealing with a crisis.

"We shouldn't be thinking about kicking a ball again. It will happen, life will return to normal, but it could easily be six months."

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