Report – UEFA consider drastic rescheduling plan that could affect Rangers until 2023
UEFA are considering a radical plan for the 2020/21 season that could see Rangers play from December to November next year, according to the Scottish Sun.
The ongoing Coronavirus crisis has led to a scheduling nightmare that has left the European game in disarray, with Scotland affected just as acutely as the rest of the continent.
We have already seen Euro 2020 pushed back to next summer, and it is understood that the governing body are weighing up a drastic blueprint for realigning the footballing calendar that could run as far into the future as 2023.
Initially proposed by Dutch sports business specialists Hypercube, the plan would see the current campaign concluded between the end of October and the start of December this year.
Season 2020/21 would then start at the end of December and continue through until November 1st 2021, with a month-long break built in for the European Championships.
Season 2021/22 would begin in mid-December 2021 and run until the following November, with the 2022 World Cup in Qatar starting later that year.
Season 2022/23 would be played in a breathless seven month period from the start of January until the middle of July, allowing the following campaign to begin in the middle of August 2023.
If the schedule is imposed, football would return to its normal calendar in three years’ time.
Could this plan work?
There’s no doubt about it, this is a radical solution, but the fact is that we are facing a radical problem.
Three years is a long time, and if Hypercube’s proposal is to be followed to the letter, it would mean a fairly relentless period of football with few breaks built into it.
That could ultimately prove to be its downfall.
With no real scope for player recuperation, and little indication of when transfer markets would be opened up, UEFA may end up viewing this blueprint as too drastic.
The question then, however, is what other alternatives do European football’s top brass have on the table?
In other Rangers news, Kris Boyd claims Gerrard has ‘a lot of thinking to do’ over Gers future.