Asian Champions League Farce Shows Need For Flexible Soccer Schedules In 2020/21

From Leyton Orient and FC Prishtina to Al-Hilal, soccer clubs around the world are being eliminated from tournaments due to COVID-19. Despite clubs taking every possible precaution, 2020/21 could see a tournament being won by default.

The most likely contender for that scenario is the Asian Champions League. The 2020 tournament began back in January and almost instantly began to feel the knock-on effects of COVID-19. The outbreak started spreading just as the group stages began, leading to matches involving Chinese teams to be postponed. Not long after, the whole tournament was put on hold.

The Asian Champions League is split into western and eastern halves, with the winners of each half meeting in the final.

The western half has now restarted and finished playing its group stage. It will begin its knockout stage this weekend, but the holders Al-Hilal have already been eliminated, not due to results on the pitch, but due to the AFC’s lack of flexibility off it.

Despite the group stage taking place in the supposed ‘bubble’ of Qatar, most of Al-Hilal’s squad still caught COVID-19, meaning they had only 11 players, three of which were goalkeepers, for their final group match. They were willing to play on though, and even made it onto the pitch before the match was called off as AFC regulations require 13 players.

Because there was no space in the schedule to rearrange the match, Al-Hilal were kicked out of the tournament despite already qualifying for the knockout stage through the results of their first five group games.

They are the second team to be eliminated from the Asian Champions League by COVID-19, after Al-Wahda from the United Arab Emirates were kicked out because they were unable to reach the Qatar ‘bubble’ following several cases of COVID-19 in their squad.

But Al-Hilal fans must be wondering why the AFC couldn’t have been more flexible. The clubs in the western half of the tournament are rushing through three knockout rounds this week so they can play the semi-final on October 3^rd, but then there is a gap of over two months before the final.

The West would have played all of its matches before some teams in the East play a single game. The East’s matches in Group E and Group F don’t even have venues yet and there doesn’t seem to be much of an appetite for the tournament among some of the federations on the eastern side of the draw.

With the East going through a similar rushed group stage and knockout stage in November and December, a few cases of the virus late on in those stages could mean that the winner of the West’s semi-final ends up as the 2020 AFC Asian Champions League winner by default.

But by sacrificing current champions Al-Hilal in order to needlessly rush through the western half of the tournament, the AFC have weakened the credibility of this season’s Asian Champions League, ensuring whoever does eventually win it will have an asterisk next to their trophy.

Imagine the same thing happening in the UEFA Champions League, with Bayern Munich being eliminated under similar circumstances. It would make a mockery of the competition.

FIFA and UEFA should learn from the AFC’s mistake before it is too late. Already, some sides have been eliminated from competitions in Europe due to COVID-19, and with the extremely tight soccer calendar this year, it’s almost guaranteed that more teams will be forced to withdraw from competitions.

In the Premier League already this season, there have been cases of COVID-19 involving several teams such as Manchester United, Chelsea and West Ham United. Luckily, they haven’t impacted those teams’ schedules so far, but its only a matter of time before travel restrictions or a cluster of infections affect the outcome of a competition in Europe.

Leyton Orient were pretty unlikely to win the Carabao Cup this season. They did however, miss out on plenty of revenue due to their withdrawal from their match against Tottenham Hotspur this week, as well as any potential revenue from the next round where, had they beaten Spurs, they would have faced Chelsea.

It should have been painfully obvious to UEFA that this season’s schedule would be tighter than previous seasons, and that games would be postponed because of COVID-19. Like the AFC, it is up to UEFA to create the best schedule possible in the circumstances.

Two ways to do this would be to remove several international breaks this season in order to give clubs more time to play games, or to push back EURO 2020 by another month or two. That second option might be too difficult to implement, but it would increase the chances of EURO 2020 being played in front of full stadiums, so UEFA should give it serious consideration. Removing some international breaks would be easier, but rather than reducing the amount of international fixtures, UEFA is actually increasing them.

Its unlikely that anyone will learn the lessons from Al-Hilal’s elimination from the Asian Champions League, or that UEFA will make any extra efforts to prevent a similar situation happening in Europe. So this year, there may well be some asterisks next to some tournament winners’ names.