LaLiga president Javier Tebas has given Barcelona and Real Madrid fans hope to celebrate a title win with their teams. With 11 rounds of matches left to play tonight, LaLiga resumes with two points clear from Real Madrid on Barcelona.
Matches should be played behind closed doors but Tebas said: ‘If before the end of the season we could have 10 percent or 15 percent of the stadium capacity that would be good. The pandemic slumps. It will have to be coordinated with fans returning. We are going to see it in 10 to 15 days.’
Tebas also warned complacent players that irresponsibly behaving and threatening the completion of the season could mean clubs being forced to lock up entire rosters while the remaining 110 matches are played according to Daily Mail.
There have been several instances of players breaking the rules of quarantine and if that continues, the club will think about placing players under lockdown.
Four players from Seville posted pictures of a 12-person barbecue two weeks ago when the get-togethers were reduced to just 10 people. And Barcelona’s Nelson Semedo is the latest to be photographed flouting restrictions, holding a birthday party.
Tebas said the league had no power to penalize players, but it was written to clubs, and forced to make them break the rules by themselves. Semedo did not train with his team-mates in Barcelona Thursday.
He added of the protocol for new cases of coronavirus: ‘If there is a positive the player is put into quarantine. We ‘re testing before any games. And we know that there are so many good ones. Two days later, players who test positive are again being screened to rule out false positives. They will then be checked every 3 days before they’re free to return.’
Tebas said the odd one or two cases could not be ruled out at a club, but that the players and clubs would be negligent to do more than that.
As a result of the coronavirus pandemic, Tebas also admitted that LaLiga clubs will lose € 800 million in revenue in their 2019-20 accounts, but he said he did not believe that future television contracts would suffer.
Tebas said an earlier estimate that clubs would lose € 300 million if the season wrapped up behind closed doors did not include money likely to be lost on the market for transfer.
The league president said salary cuts will be the way clubs deal with losses, and he predicted that ‘only about 10 percent of clubs will have problems’ going into next season and that none of them will be in danger of going out.
