Date: 16th March 2020 at 6:10pm
Written by:

It’s a strange old time for football fans at the moment, and there are plenty of questions doing the rounds – not least, whether or not the upcoming European Championships will be postponed for a period of time, or even, potentially completely cancelled to buy leagues worldwide greater wriggle room to complete the current 2019/20 campaigns, and get back on track for the 2020/21 competitions.

For those who like a flutter, I can only imagine there are already odds available on the potential outcomes here and if you are new to the betting markets bet365 new customer bonus is a decent place to start.

The latest to add their voice to such a call was the Italian Football Association who called for a postponement of the tournament (presumably until the summer of 2021) so that their domestic campaign, Serie A, could come to a fairer conclusion this year following its suspension the other week.

Federation president Gabriele Gravina confirmed they would be tabling the idea with UEFA during a meeting later this week, and naturally, representatives from our domestic game will be offering their own thoughts up on where football goes from here. There certainly isn’t agreement across the European game though, as whilst some look at options of ending the season early and using current standings, averages or even Play-Off matches to help find a conclusion, others like La Liga president Javier Tebas remains ‘convinced’ that the Spanish season will come to a natural conclusion.

But even if domestic leagues do restart and play themselves out, given the delays that will be in place following the current lull, Euro 2020 continues to be massively impacted and even a short delay this summer will still pose problems for pre-season plans on a domestic front.

For a whole variety of reasons, postponing the Euros until next summer seems to make the most sense, especially given the change to multiple host countries for this tournament – if not a complete cancellation to give football, and life as a whole, a greater opportunity to get back to normal.

The biggest driver in whatever outcome is secured for the tournament will naturally be money-driven though, the Euros aren’t cheap to stage, again especially in light of the logistics this time around of fixturing matches in different host countries, and plenty of that investment will have already taken place during the planning stages, securing venues and so on and given the revenues the tournament creates for UEFA – a short postponement or delaying the competition until next summer, is one thing…a complete cancellation is a different beast entirely – and plenty would question whether or not they would stomach such a loss.