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UEFA agree 2020 European Championships delayed until 2021 – BBC Sport breaking news

4 years ago
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The 2020 European Championships have been postponed.

The news was expected as we reported earlier today (see below) with UEFA having a pivotal meeting on Tuesday via video-conferencing.

The postponement would hopefully allow domestic leagues to be completed, hopefully by end of June, possibly into July.

Now on Tuesday afternoon, BBC Sport are reporting the breaking news. That UEFA have agreed to the postponement of the 2020 European Championships.

They were due to be held 12 June 2020 to 12 July 2021.

Now BBC Sport say UEFA have agreed to new dates of 11 June 2020 to 11 July 2021.

BBC Sport report:

BREAKING

Euros has been postponed to 2021

The Norwegian FA have tweeted:

“UEFA has decided that the European Championship is postponed to 2021. It will be played from 11 June to 11 July next year. More information coming.”

The Mag earlier today (Tuesday 17 March 2020):

A big week for Newcastle United and every other Premier League club.

The same for all other football leagues in Europe.

Today (Tuesday) sees a pivotal meeting hosted by UEFA via video conferencing.

Decisions made at that UEFA meeting will then largely dictate what happens next for individual leagues putting plans in place, in terms of dealing with the challenges of the Coronavirus.

That main challenge for most is how to get their league seasons completed.

A key decision today, is widely expected to be the postponement of the 2020 European Championships, almost certainly put back to summer 2021.

Ahead of this meeting the Presidents of both La Liga and Serie A have already gone public in saying that there has been conversations between the major leagues ahead of the UEFA meeting, on a joint plan of returning to play club football, coordinating timings that would allow domestic leagues to finish around the same time. Which would then allow them collectively to work on an agreed schedule of when the 2020/21 league seasons could kick off.

Both presidents have indicated that their will be no chance of club football returning in April but are confident that the start of May is a real possibility, if everything falls into place. The intention being of trying to get league seasons finished ideally by end of June, or early July if necessary.

The idea being that April would see squads returning to training and then preparing for a return to playing club football in May.

To allow that to happen, the first step would be UEFA postponing this summer’s Euros (scheduled to take place 12 June 2020 to 12 July 2020), to open up that gap for clubs to hopefully complete their league seasons in May-June/July.

However, a new exclusive from The Athletic says that whilst UEFA may be prepared to postpone the Euros, Newcastle United and all other major clubs will have to pay the price.

The report revealing that UEFA are going to demand compensation of around £275 million from the individual clubs/leagues to postpone Euro 2020 by a year.

This £275m figure is what UEFA estimates it will cost to delay the European Championships back by 12 months to June 2021.

For the clubs and leagues, it is an absolute necessity for them to complete at least their league schedules, due to the fact if they call off the remaining matches and/or attempt to make the current tables the final ones, they will be open to countless legal challenges. Clubs not happy if they are negatively affected by calling the final matches off, whilst there will be serious amounts of money to be repaid to the likes of broadcasters and sponsors if leagues aren’t completed.

There are just under 100 clubs in the big five leagues (Bundesliga, Serie A, Premier League, La Liga and Ligue 1), so averaged out, under £3m per club would be a small price to pay, certainly for Premier League clubs such as Newcastle United, if it helped allow the league seasons (and cups hopefully…) to be completed.

The Athletic say that if clubs/leagues agree to their compensation, a task force would then be established, comprising representatives of UEFA, the European Club Association (ECA) and European Leagues (EL) to produce a potential schedule for club football/leagues as a matter of urgency.

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