It will have to be the players who'd have to put their foot down and demand that football cannot and should not be played.Footballers are going to come out as the biggest losers from this all, irrespective of how 'Project Restart' goes.
Let's just carry out the math that we're dealing with- We're talking about atleast 50 members from each club (staff and players), ballboys, groundsmen, security, health professionals, production team, referees, technical teams, etc. taking part here. The 1000-1200 people in this cohort, which would include players, staff, production, etc. are essential for football and cannot be replaced, or cannot be replaced overnight. So, they'd have to test each one of these every day. Why? Because if even one player has caught coronavirus, you want that detected before everyone else on the team catches it as well. Assuming teams agree to play out the remaining games over even 5 weeks - which sounds overly ambitious as we're talking 2 games a week - we're talking about 42k tests for these essential people. Add to that, groundsmen, ballboys and other non essential people will require atleast 4 tests a week - 1 on the day of Kickoff, 1 on day before kickoff - So that means we're talking about 16k tests. Let's round the two numbers up and we're saying roughly 60k tests are required over 5 weeks to get football underway. While we're talking about this, don't forget it's being said that the test results will be back in a couple of hours, much faster than what it takes for general public to get their results back! Add to that, we're taking away some Healthcare professionals away from the system in these times just so that people can get a source of entertainment back.
Now think about how the public will perceive these money grabbing footballers. They are taking away our docs, they can get testing done faster, and are given all the facilities while someone they know is dead from this disease. Just think about the outrage this will lead to. And this is assuming the best case scenario where everything goes as per FA's plan and no player gets infected.
In case a player gets infected, maybe dies, what then? The teammates will hate their club for forcing them back on the field despite all the professionals saying that it's unsafe. The players of other clubs will hate the FA and their clubs for this. There obviously won't be anymore football. Some players might have reduced lung capacity which will shorten their career, reduce their abilities, etc. Are the FA going to cover these costs as well?
It's a stupid argument that football needs to come back. Just follow the Eredivisie rule, don't relegate anyone this year, get the top 2 from championship up this year, top 4 from Championship up next year to compensate them. And as far as relegation is concerned - Bottom 4 from PL go down every year till the number of clubs gets back to 20.
