Reporter Cheng Shan reported that fully promoting the restoration of the home-and-away system of the Chinese Super League in the 2022 season is one of the important issues confirmed by the Chengdu meeting of the Chinese Football Association on January 9. The restoration of the home and away system requires the China Football Federation Preparatory Group to formulate a schedule plan that can be implemented, the support and assistance of the Chinese Football Association, the recognition from the General Administration of Sports, and the close cooperation of the Chinese Super League cities. Therefore, this is not a simple task, and it requires multi-party coordination and joint efforts to achieve it.
The China Football Federation preparatory group responsible for league operation has communicated with all Chinese Super League clubs on the resumption of the home and away format before the start of the Chengdu Conference, the vast majority of clubs are in favor of restoring the home and away games, only a very few clubs have doubts for some comprehensive reasons, but they are not unsolvable problems, so it is a difficult task to fully promote the resumption of home and away matches in 2022.
Although there is still no clear schedule out, as far as the reporter's analysis is concerned, it is more difficult to implement the home-and-away system throughout the year. Mainly related to the uncertainty of the epidemic factor, once a certain Super League city or several Chinese Super League cities have an epidemic, the entire league will be affected. But even so, the work is still going on in an orderly manner, but the work to be done is more than in many times more than in previous years.
Each year, the schedule takes into account whether THE FIFA League, the Asian regional tournament and the professional league area itself should be avoided. In 2022, the Chinese national team world preliminary tournament is basically out, so the last match ends after March 29 to return to China, after 21 days of quarantine, theoretically the earliest can start on April 23.
However, the AFC Champions League group stage implements a centralized meeting system, so that until the beginning of May, if the four clubs of the Chinese Super League send the main force to participate, return to China and then isolate, there is a fifa matchday (cross-continental World Cup place competition), all of which will be completed until June, and the completion time left for the Chinese league by the World Cup is fixed, that is, in early November, if the tournament starts in June, if you want to finish in November, it can only continue the tournament system, and you can't play the home and away games throughout the year. Although there are still Asian Games in between, the 2018 Indonesia Asian Games, the league did not give way, so the possibility of not giving way in the 2022 season is also relatively large.
However, once the Asian Games are not allowed, it will inevitably have a certain impact on individual teams that use young players in batches, but the temporary adjustment of the U23 playing policy should also be able to make up for it. To sum up: the AFC Champions League is negotiated, the Asian Games will not give way, the league wants to play home and away, finish at the beginning of November, and have to start at the end of April.
Then according to the start of the game at the end of April, there are 18 Chinese Super League teams and 18 home games. If there is no epidemic, then everything is not difficult, but if there is an epidemic, the situation is complicated. Take the day of the reporter's release (January 16, 2022) for example, there are many places caused by the epidemic caused by the restriction of access, Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Zhengzhou, these five cities have epidemics and there are Chinese Super League teams, whether it is their home or away, there will be team access barriers, once encountered such difficulties, if there is no sufficient plan in advance to resume home and away, the league may have to meltdown.
Then the more secure way should be to give each Chinese Super League team to contact a backup home in advance, just in the surrounding cities and counties of the city where the Chinese Super League team is located, and even some Chinese Super League teams need to prepare more than one spare venue to be safe, which means that 18 teams actually need at least 36 or more home stadiums to use, in order to basically ensure that the Super League can continue in the face of the epidemic.
So there is an epidemic in the Chinese Super League, are other surrounding cities not afraid? There is also a plan that once the first case occurs, the Chinese Super League team should immediately leave to change the home stadium of the game under the condition of ensuring the safety of epidemic prevention and its own problems, so as to prevent the expansion of the epidemic in the city or even the lockdown, resulting in the stagnation of the game. For example, the current situation in Shanghai, at least to the surrounding Kunshan, Suzhou to make alternative considerations. Both the home and alternate home fields are ready, and only then can the teams make the basic preparations for the main and away games.
Once the outbreak trend of the epidemic shows a spread situation, the country is not recommended for large-scale personnel flow of the situation, then the backup home plan may also be invalid, then it is necessary to consider whether to use the centralized conference system in the subsequent stage to play all the games, the league in the middle of the suspension waiting for the epidemic in the past is not affordable, then the centralized competition system, the residence and the venue should also have a clear plan in advance, then want to live in the hotel the possibility should be small, for this unpredictable situation will not be able to predict whether it will happen, The hotel can't temporarily prepare rooms for the team, so if you need to partially play a tournament, you have to consider staying at the football base, which is more secure.
And these are not the whole possibility of restoring the home-and-away system, all the team control of the tournament system is unified in epidemic prevention conditions and unified management, but the flow of personnel in each city is different, the epidemic prevention risk is also different, once a player is infected or becomes a close contact, so that the team that has played with it needs a large-scale isolation, in fact, it will affect the league process.
This involves the decentralization of epidemic prevention management responsibilities once the home and away games are restored, and the club and the local government must be responsible for this aspect at the same time as the Preparatory Group of the China Football Federation, how to coordinate this management, minimize the risk of infection, especially how to do a good job in player protection education for cities with repeated epidemics, which is the preparation that needs to be done before submitting the home and away schedules to the General Administration for declaration.
And after doing all this work well, it will submit the home and away schedules, the home and away schedules are not necessarily the only plan, the game plan of the conference system is still an alternative to the 2022 season, but the 2022 season may no longer need this way of playing in 2021, most of them will consider the way of the 2021 of the Chinese League A, three divisions, six teams in each division of the double round of 34 rounds of the format. Or, take the original set of ideas in 2021, play a part of the tournament system first, and then open the home and away games later, the premise of opening is that the epidemic prevention and control conditions permit. And the most extreme way, is to play a part of the home and away, even the conference system can not be restored, once the game is directly terminated, then how to arrange the points, how to calculate the champion and the promotion and relegation quota, this must be prepared in advance.
In summary, the most core factor affecting the recovery of home and away in the 2022 season is not necessarily the AFC Champions League, nor the Asian Games, or the uncertain epidemic. After the epidemic is over, everything will be better. At present, if there are really no conditions for opening the home-and-away system at the end of April, it is still the most important thing to play the league first. Then play a part of the tournament system first, and then wait for the reopening of the home stadium. Even so, as long as the home and away games are restored, there are still many uncontrollable contingencies.
What the CFA preparatory team needs to do is to do its best to think of all possible unexpected accidents and make corresponding plans to ensure that the home and away games can be restored as a real possibility. After the plan is determined, it is also necessary to carry out process deduction and confirm the implementation with the relevant departments one by one, which will take time.