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Coronavirus: Closed Door Matches

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3 minutes ago, Angus Scott said:

Having watched Moengengladbach v Koln earlier & now PSG v Dotmund, both being played behind closed doors, I conclude that it would be better to postpone the games.

Football is nothing without any fans watching

No worse than watching a moody foreign stream on mute

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https://www.espn.com/soccer/soccer-transfers/story/4072036/how-coronavirus-could-impact-transfers-in-summer-window-as-clubs-navigate-scoutingtravel-restrictions

 

The coronavirus outbreak has impacted soccer all over Europe, with postponements, domestic and cup games taking place behind closed doors, and travel bans preventing teams from traveling. There's also a growing concern over transfers and, more immediately, the logistics of finishing the 2019-20 seasons on time. There's also a genuine possibility that this summer's major tournament, Euro 2020, could be postponed/rescheduled.

 

Behind the scenes, soccer teams are struggling to conduct basic business when it comes to scouting and planning their summer transfer business. The knock-on effects of this outbreak could be significant. With no access to an increasing number of matches across top leagues, and travel becoming increasingly difficult to those games where spectators are still allowed, can they properly scout the players they need to improve their squads?

 

Italy, the first European country to be widely disrupted by the coronavirus, has already been experiencing major disruption to its football -- both on and off the pitch -- for weeks. From precautionary measures like postponing youth games in the north of the nation, where the virus first appeared, to playing games nationwide behind closed doors, the Italian FA is considering suspending Serie A altogether.

 

While the plight of fans and players is attracting most attention, scouting is also seriously affected. The international chief scout of one of Italy's top clubs tells me: "Youth games have already been suspended for weeks and now all the Serie A games are being played behind closed doors, so obviously it's impossible to attend. Early in the crisis we had problems assigning some of our scouts, as they lived in the red zones [infected areas]. But now with the general travel ban, it's affecting everyone."

 

As with any other business, the blanket ban on travel has also made it difficult to schedule scouting and sporting strategy meetings at home and abroad, and for an industry that functions very much on relationships and where key decisions are taken face to face, video conferencing is an unsatisfactory alternative. It's still a culture of clandestine meetings in hotels to thrash out contract details; that's much harder to do over Skype.

 

Also, international scouting operations are slowly coming to a standstill. During the past couple of weeks, we've only sent our people to games that are reachable by car, like Marseille, Monaco and Nice," my contact continues. "But now, as most European leagues are closing access to games entirely, it makes any travel pointless."

 

When asked whether South American trips -- usually high on the agenda for top clubs Europe-wide, especially at this time of the year, when the local leagues and continental competitions are reaching their climax -- are still being carried out, he answers, "We are very reluctant to send anyone by intercontinental flights now. As the virus is spreading, we cannot be assured that we can get the scouts back, as flight schedules are being disrupted on a daily basis, and we cannot guarantee the general safety of our employees."

 

The views of the Italian club's chief scout are echoed by a colleague at a dominant French club. "Our main problem is that we are now only able to plan on a week-by-week basis," he explains. "Under normal circumstances we would have our schedule worked out months in advance, even with flights and hotels booked in certain cases. Now we don't even know what the next few days might bring."

Emphasising that scouts are still actively travelling around Europe, he adds: "We are monitoring those leagues that are still open to the public. Actually, it gives us the opportunity to travel to countries that aren't usually that high up on the agenda. Some of the scouts are not so keen on travelling under the current circumstances, but they're professional and get on with it." It's likely then that leagues such as those in Eastern Europe and North Africa are getting more attention than they'd usually attract, which could provide some benefit for territories often ignored by the scouting circuit.

 

The main scouting activities are now transitioning to the screen: Practically all professional football clubs are hooked up to at least one of the two major video streaming services, InstatScout and Wyscout, which provide footage of all top league games worldwide. But the inability to make the final checks on transfer targets in person is about to create headaches for clubs. Several of the insiders I spoke to raised the same problems: Though the prospective summer signings when the transfer window opens on July 1 have already been watched live by senior scouts, it's usually toward the end of the season when the real decision-makers (think sporting directors, head coaches or even chief executives and owners) fly out for final assessments. With transfer fees often pushing $100 million, signing players solely on video evidence is out of the question.

 

The dilemma facing one particular high-ranking club executive will be familiar to his peers: "We have already had our first internal meetings on how to deal with the summer transfer market if coronavirus persists. When we present a prospective transfer target to the board, we hand over a multipage dossier containing scouting reports and personality analysis, as well as detailed statistical and analytics-based information. If we are now facing a travel ban and inaccessible stadiums for an open-ended period, there will be challenges ahead. "The live scouting aspect, especially the recent observations, weigh heavily in the final decision-making process. And the deeper assessment of a player's character is something that is usually concluded towards the final months before the upcoming transfer period. At the moment, everything is up in the air, but we have to try to be as prepared as we possibly can."

 

That could mean clubs rethinking their transfer strategy completely in order to respond to the likely uncertainties. While the high-profile, huge-fee deals that might be affected will take the headlines, most scouting activity operates on similar principles of reviewing video and cross-checking in person, which means there is potential for any transfer between different countries being affected.

Will we see clubs looking at signing more players from their own domestic leagues, rather than risking forking out a fortune on a half-scouted foreign option? If so, it will be fascinating to see the potential effect on transfer fees: It's likely that prices will inflate to reflect the restricted, lower-risk local market, not to mention clubs' reluctance to sell to domestic rivals. As for those clubs that rely on developing and selling players to survive, how will they manage with a potential worldwide market suddenly closed off?

 

It's clear that there are some tricky decisions ahead for those in the transfer market, and already at the back of the minds of some is a worst-case scenario that could further complicate matters. While we're worrying about getting the 2019-20 season finished across Europe, can we even be sure that the next one will be able to start on schedule? With no way of knowing how long the crisis will continue, will clubs get cold feet over spending millions to add to their huge payrolls when there may be no games for their new signings to play in for weeks, even months?

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NCAA Basketball Tournament in the US and Spring Koushien baseball tournament in Japan played without fans/cancelled respectively.  Huge financial losses.  Supreme Court and Congress briefed that between 70-150 million in the U.S. are expected to eventually contract Coronavirus.  This is exploding all around us.

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5 minutes ago, SheppyFox said:

Italy is about to order the immediate halt of care for the elderly, so I hear. 

Isn't that the main principle of their triage which has been operating for the last 48 hours or so anyway. So sad

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https://www.juventus.com/it/news/news/2020/comunicazione-urgente.php

 

Danielle Rugani (ironically linked with us in January) tested positive for Covid-19.

 

I expect all leagues around Europe to be postponed very soon now. Perhaps one more round of fixtures in the PL, but then surely that will be a wrap, and there's no telling if it will resume or just end early.

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2 hours ago, Nalis said:

I've got the perfect solution to wrap up postponed matches, you have my advanced warning on decimal goals.

 

- When a match is scheduled to play, teams are awarded .1 goals based on their position from 1st to 20th. For example for this weekend's games, Liverpool would automatically be assigned 2.0 goals and Norwich would be assigned 0.1.

-Any team who has a game is hand and can technically move up a spot had that played that game in hand at the time would be given an extra 0.1 to compensate. Therefore, Man City would not get one but Arsenal and Sheff Utd would.

- Each home team is automatically given 1.0 goals.

- Therefore, Man City (1.9 for position + 1 for being at home) v Arsenal (0.1 for the game in hand + 1.2 for position) would have finished Man City 2.9 - 1.3 Arsenal

 

Where's my seat on the Premier League board??? :D

 

 

images.jpeg.2ae5b32c81276e57372fc035c07e1cbe.jpeg

 

 

Don't call us... 

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1 hour ago, Aus Fox said:

Simple let’s just use XG to decide who would have won each game. Those who constantly refer to this stay would wet themselves with excitement. Anyone know our XG v Watford?

Out of interest what would the score be if we played Watford away?

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Aside from the Premier League, how do people think the european competitions will be resolved? My guess is changing the format to one legged matches behind closed doors, probably in the least infected country between the two or a neutral venue?

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2 hours ago, Angus Scott said:

Having watched Moengengladbach v Koln earlier & now PSG v Dotmund, both being played behind closed doors, I conclude that it would be better to postpone the games.

Football is nothing without any fans watching

You wouldn't start a season behind closed doors, but with the season having got so far I think the right thing to do is get it finished and we just have to accept that behind closed doors is the only way.

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It seems to me that there's another aspect to this question of playing matches behind closed doors.

 

People are going to be stuck at home in much larger numbers than normal.  Self-quarantine, public gatherings banned, schools and workplaces closed.  They're going to need something to keep them entertained and distracted.  Most people (by an order of magnitude) watch sports on TV rather than live.  Maybe it's not a bad idea to keep providing people with something to focus on besides dystopia?

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17 hours ago, Deeg67 said:

No it doesn’t, because no seasonal flu since 1918 has had a mortality rate anywhere near COVID-19.

 

That said, the odds of a vaccine being developed, clinically trialed and widely available by next winter are very low.  Non-zero, but very low.  Best practice is to prepare as much as possible in other ways - most importantly, to make sure testing is widely available, free to patients and aggressively applied.

 

I have a lot of respect for your contribution to this thread, you are clearly keeping up.

 

Given your location I'm bound to ask how things are in Japan? you look to be about 2 days ahead of us on the pure infections/casualty numbers, but I guess Japan started a bit earlier than we did.

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9 minutes ago, Vardinio'sCat said:

 

I have a lot of respect for your contribution to this thread, you are clearly keeping up.

 

Given your location I'm bound to ask how things are in Japan? you look to be about 2 days ahead of us on the pure infections/casualty numbers, but I guess Japan started a bit earlier than we did.

Japan is an interesting test case. The growth of new cases is far behind what it statistically should be. It’s widely believed that this is because the Abe government is behind the curve in testing (not as far as the U.S., but no industrialized nation is as far behind in testing as the U.S.) in order to depress numbers and try to save the Olympics (which are toast, IMO). Certainly possible and quite in-character. But the puzzling thing is that there’s been no huge spike in hospitalizations, which you’d expect if it were simply a matter of underreporting - especially since Japan has the largest elderly population in the first world per capita. Why is that?

 

The best guess right now is that the reason is that the Japanese are so good as following instructions. If you’ve spent any time here you know, it’s no myth - this is a society where service to the community over the individual is a religion and the people are literally obedient to a fault. It’s possible that the Japanese are so assiduously adhering to dictums about self-quarantine and limiting contact that they’re slowing the spread of COVID-19 dramatically. If that’s true (and there’s no way yet to know for sure) it’s evidence that containment measures other than Chinese-style lockdowns really do work. But only if people do their part as individuals.

 

Alternatively, it's possible that there actually is a surge in hospitalizations and deaths, but the government is covering it up.  That would be totally consistent for Abe, but I'm skeptical they could pull that off.  Or we could be on the verge of an explosion, just delayed for some (inexplicable, frankly) reason.  Or there could be something totally different at work.  But it's clear something odd is happening here, just not what it is.

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'Japan is an interesting test case. The growth of new cases is far behind what it statistically should be. It’s widely believed that this is because the Abe government is behind the curve in testing (not as far as the U.S., but no industrialized nation is as far behind in testing as the U.S.) in order to depress numbers and try to save the Olympics (which are toast, IMO). Certainly possible and quite in-character. But the puzzling thing is that there’s been no huge spike in hospitalizations, which you’d expect if it were simply a matter of underreporting - especially since Japan has the largest elderly population in the first world per capita. Why is that?

 

The best guess right now is that the reason is that the Japanese are so good as following instructions. If you’ve spent any time here you know, it’s no myth - this is a society where service to the community over the individual is a religion and the people are literally obedient to a fault. It’s possible that the Japanese are so assiduously adhering to dictums about self-quarantine and limiting contact that they’re slowing the spread of COVID-19 dramatically. If that’s true (and there’s no way yet to know for sure) it’s evidence that containment measures other than Chinese-style lockdowns really do work. But only if people do their part as individuals.

 

Alternatively, it's possible that there actually is a surge in hospitalizations and deaths, but the government is covering it up.  That would be totally consistent for Abe, but I'm skeptical they could pull that off.  Or we could be on the verge of an explosion, just delayed for some (inexplicable, frankly) reason.  Or there could be something totally different at work.  But it's clear something odd is happening here, just not what it is.'

 

 

 

 

 

 

I think it is quite hard to cover up a large number of deaths, so I would think a high degree of compliance sounds more likely. It isn't going to happen like that here at this point, but maybe the lessons from other countries ahead of us on the curve will help. I'm sure there has been a reluctance to face up to widespread testing in many countries, but the Olympics is bound to be a massive headache.

 

I read somewhere that a postponement might be a solution. They have to use that infrastructure at some point.

 

 

 

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The problem with a postponement is that if we don't have a vaccine by next winter, 2021 could be even worse for COVID than this year.

 

South Korea is still the model to be followed - super-aggressively test everyone for free and get out in front of it.

 

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