Coronavirus: Spanish football in lockdown with uncertainty the only certainty

Real Madrid were due to fly to Britain on Monday for a Champions League last-16 second leg at Manchester City on Tuesday. Instead Madrid’s players were self-isolating last weekend, and neither they nor anyone else in Spanish football knows when they might kick a ball in anger again.

Spanish society went into an almost total lockdown over recent days, with the country’s president Pedro Sanchez declaring an official state of emergency featuring “drastic measures” including ordering everybody to remain in their own houses unless it was strictly necessary to go out.

That message was echoed by Spain national team coach Luis Enrique, who instead of spending the weekend deciding the final selections for his squad for March friendlies against Germany and Netherlands, was appearing in a public service video saying: “For the good of everyone, stay at home.”

With all bars, restaurants and even public parks closed by order of the government, Madrid captain Sergio Ramos, Barcelona skipper Lionel Messi and Atletico Madrid coach Diego Simeone made similar public calls along with the hashtag #QuédateEnCasa or #StayHome.

“As our beloved Alfredo Di Stefano told us, no individual player is as good as us all together,” said Ramos. “Now it’s the same. We are all a team, and we all have our role to play. It’s very easy, just stay at home. The responsibility of all, is the responsibility of each of us.”

All 42 Primera and Segunda division clubs are following that advice. Madrid’s players were the first to go into quarantine last Thursday when the club’s basketball player Trey Thompkins tested positive for Covid-19. Most followed quickly, and the Spanish football federation [RFEF] have mandated that all facilities must be closed, while helping clubs put together individualised training plans for players now at home with their families for the foreseeable future.

Despite these measures, among the more than 1,000 people around Spain to test positive on Sunday were Valencia defenders Ezequiel Garay, Jose Gaya and Eliaquim Mangala – the first three La Liga players to publicly confirm they were ill with the coronavirus. Los Che club doctor Juan Aliaga, who worked daily with the squad, has also tested positive.

Nobody really knows what will happen now. At present, only the next two weekends of La Liga fixtures are officially postponed. Last Thursday RFEF president Luis Rubiales said the situation would be looked at again on March 25. But the move to a general lockdown in Spanish society since then has pushed the timeframe well back.

April 18 has been mooted optimistically as a date when the crisis might potentially have cleared enough for stadiums to reopen. More gloomy [or maybe realistic] predictions say that 2019/20 should just be written off already as it will be the summer at least before games can be played again.

“The fairest would be to call this a lost year, without promotions, relegations, champions, runners-up, nothing,” Deportivo La Coruna coach Fernando Vazquez said on Friday. “If the situation continues as negative as this, and the competition cannot be played, it must be annulled, in my way of thinking. My feeling is that this season is just not going to be able to be finished.”

Catalan paper Mundo Deportivo had a different idea on Sunday morning. Its cover claimed that if the season is ended now, Barcelona will formally ask to be declared 2019/20 title winners, given they are currently two points clear at the top of table, and were also ‘winter champions’ at the half-way point in January.

Madrid would then have blown the title by losing at Real Betis last weekend. Real Sociedad have clinched an unlikely top four spot by beating Eibar behind closed doors last Tuesday. And currently fifth placed Atletico’s only way into next season’s Champions League would be as holders, if this year’s competition is ever played out.

It also then begs the question of whether current Primera relegation zone dwellers Espanyol, Leganes, Mallorca and Eibar would be relegated. And replaced by Segunda top three Cadiz, Real Zaragoza and Almeria. Or maybe we will have an expanded top flight for 2021/22.

La Liga say they are not currently contemplating such thorny problems, as the financial consequences of forgetting the last 11 weeks of this season are just too serious to consider. Never playing those games would cost towards €700m between lost gate receipts and TV revenues. That would however bring huge economic problems for many clubs across the first and second divisions, including Vazquez’s Deportivo, who just last January needed emergency funding to stay afloat.

“Damage is being done which is difficult to evaluate,” said Jaume Roures, president of LaLiga’s broadcast partners Mediapro on Radio Catalunya on Saturday. “Right now everything is postponed, and nobody knows whether in three weeks we can play those games. Where will we be in a month and a half? Nobody knows. And the damage being done right now is important.”

La Liga president Javier Tebas’ attempt to try and continue playing games behind closed-doors last week was at least partly down to an awareness of the huge and drastic consequences of TV income not arriving as scheduled over the coming months.

“The only thing we are working off at the moment is finishing the competition,” Tebas told the COPE radio station on Sunday. “We’ve been in contact with Italy, Germany and presidents of the other leagues, to try and make the calendars fit. The doctors are dealing with the medical issue, we are trying to provide a solution to an economic problem – what happens with our close to 100 broadcast contracts all over the world. If you don’t transmit the signal, you don’t get paid, that is clear.”

All La Liga clubs want to get that signal back being transmitted again, as soon as is legally and morally possible. They know however that any attempt to persuade the players to come back to work before restaurants and schools reopen is unlikely to succeed. “Are elite footballers somehow immune?” asked Madrid defender Dani Carvajal on Instagram 24 hours before his basketball colleague Thompkins’ positive test.

Euro 2020 being postponed during Tuesday’s giant Uefa teleconference might bring some more breathing room for the domestic leagues. The third weekend of May has been marked out as a potential date when games might in theory be restarted should the health situation allow for it.

For that to happen squads would probably have to be back training by late April, even allowing for the impressive home gyms which some players have been showing off on social media. It would also open up the possibility of currently injured players like Madrid galactico Eden Hazard and Barca forward Luis Suarez returning to play potentially crucial roles in a late season run of games.

But given how Spain has gone into lockdown over the weekend, with police patrolling the streets to force people to return to their homes, the idea of restarting the football season seems a long way away. Into the void comes much speculation. Has Gareth Bale played his last match for Madrid? Will Quique Setien get another game as Barcelona coach? The truth is that nobody knows.

The only sure thing is that the almost total shutdown of Spanish society forced by Covid-19 will have very serious consequences throughout football in the country. Whether the next LaLiga game gets played before a Spanish club declares bankruptcy is now a very open question.