Major European Soccer Leagues Confirm Return

Germany’s Bundesliga was first, now followed by Spain’s La Liga and the remainder of Europe’s top 4 soccer leagues – all will be returning this June. Italy’s Serie A and England’s Premier League both confirmed on May 28th their plans to resume matches. Official remainder of season schedules have not been released for any of those leagues at the time of this writing, although it is expected La Liga’s schedule will be released Sunday May 31st.  We’ll take a look at each league and what we know thus far.

England – Premier League

The richest and most popular soccer league in the entire world will officially return on June 17th, much to the joy of Liverpool fans across the globe. The Merseysiders will claim their first Premier League title in over two decades once this season ends – they currently sit 25 points clear of 2nd place Manchester City. Liverpool and their fans feared the season could be canceled, which would have negated their historic campaign, but now we know that will not be the case. 

A return to contact training (Phase 2) began in the Premier league on Thursday May 28th. Arsenal will play Man City in the featured return match, while relegation candidate Aston Villa will take on Sheffield United. The rest of the teams will play their first return matches on Friday June 19th. 

The Premier League wants to complete the season by the end of July, leaving August for the FA Cup final and remaining European matches. So that’s 92 matches total in a little over six weeks, with most teams having 9 games outstanding. According to sources, there will be slots for games on Monday and Friday at 8pm; Saturday at 12.30pm, 3pm, 5.30pm and 8pm, and Sunday at 12noon, 2pm, 4.30pm and 7pm. Midweek matches, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday will kick off at 6pm and 8pm (British Standard Time). 

Games will be played behind closed doors, but will be televised across six networks in Great Britain, the US and Canada – Sky Sports, BT Sport and Amazon Prime, NBC, NBCSN and CNBC. With the title race wrapped up, the most intriguing story lines will be the battle for the remaining 3 Champions League spots as well as those teams fighting to stay afloat in the relegation zone. The English Championship also is expected to resume toward the end of June as Leeds United look likely to make their highly anticipated return to the Premier League after nearly two decades in the Championship.

Italy – Serie A

The Italian government approved a plan for Serie A to resume on June 20. The second leg of the Coppa Italia semi-finals will take place from June 13, which is a couple rounds ahead of the English FA Cup, so the only item left for that competition is to schedule the final once the second leg is completed. In case of another interruption, Serie A has agreed on two contingency plans. The first involves play-offs and relegation play-outs. The second will freeze the table as it stands. As such, the intention is to first complete outstanding games from match day 25 so everyone has played the same number of games, then go from there.

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Serie A games will be available to watch in the USA on ESPN+ as well as BEIN Sports. Serie A teams have 12 to 13 games left on their schedules so the season completion will take longer than the Premier League or, alternatively, the schedules could be condensed, which would be taxing on players.

We also have a title race between Juventus who sit atop the table with 63 points, followed by the surprise – Lazio in 2nd with 62 points. The two sides are still due to play each other once more this season. Atalanta (48 points) and Roma (45 points) will battle it out for the final Champions League spot with Napoli (39 points) and AC Milan (36 points) hoping they will be able to make up some ground. 

Other Notes

We have yet to hear anything about the official return dates for the UEFA Champions League and Europa League, but given what has been said, we can begin to guess. It does appear likely those competitions will be completed this summer as well. It seems they are looking for it to be held in the month of August after other leagues have completed their seasons.  The committee meets on June 17th in effort to put a plan in place.

Some challenges remain as this is an international competition requiring that some travel restrictions would need to be lifted in advance. In addition, teams from leagues that have already called off their seasons are still in the competition such as PSG and Lyon. Then there are teams from Bundesliga, which will complete their seasons by mid-June. In both cases, they will suffer from long layoffs that will add an interesting dynamic in the competition. We will know more on this front around June 17th. 

With the Bundesliga running through June. La Liga, Serie A and the Premier League running through July, and the potential of a Champions League & Europa League month long competition in August, there’s a summer of soccer TV is on the horizon.

Addendum: All leagues will follow a format similar to German’s Bundesliga – five subs per game, testing multiple times a week, enclosed team environments, no fans at games, social distancing within stadiums.