Craig Anderson takes the arguments for summer football then puts a hat and a dose of factor 50 on them.
Every single Scottish football summer is pretty much the same. Every single fan in the country frantically searches the internet for information about a guy who has arrived on a one-year deal from the Croatian second division. Players go on holiday, and then spend their time on social media letting us know how much they’re enjoying #marbs. A couple of weeks later the same players moan about how hard pre-season is (ever made the connection, lads?). And, of course, it wouldn’t be summer without a debate about the future of Scottish football. This year, the hot topic was whether we should switch to summer football, a change which would of course invalidate the entire first paragraph of this article.
A switch to summer football has backing in many quarters of the Scottish game. A recent BBC survey showed a number of SPFL clubs were open to exploring the idea, and Motherwell general manager Alan Burrows has been one of the most vocal advocates of a switch. A quick glance at football forums and social media will show that many supporters are also keen on the idea. A number of compelling arguments can be made for the change, but ultimately I think there are glaring differences between what people expect from “summer football”, and what it’s actually possible to deliver.
First of all, it’s worth pointing out that “summer football” means different things to different people. My impression is that most people are talking about a season which roughly follows the calendar year, eg from March to November, while a few may be envisaging an elongation of the current season structure. I’m going to focus on the first of those two definitions, and look at whether we could move alongside the likes of Ireland, Sweden and Norway in playing a calendar year season.
Much of the argument centres round the weather. If we want to encourage more fans to games then we should play when it’s warmer rather than having everyone sitting around freezing their balls off in the middle of winter. The overall premise is pretty hard to disagree with, but it can sometimes be easy to forget that some people are interested in things other than football. On a cold Saturday in winter, football pretty much has the market sewn up, with the only other alternatives being the pub, the shops or the cinema. But in the summer, there are many more competing alternatives; even just something like sitting in a beer garden might be more appealing.
The summer also has a number of other sporting distractions for people; the likes of Wimbledon and Open Championship are staples of the UK sporting summer, and we have a major football championship every other year. There are other events away from sport too – how many football fans go to T in the Park each year, for example? It’s also the time of year where most people go on holiday, something that extends to the players too. A switch to summer football would affect every player in the country, including part-timers, given that the whole pyramid would have to change in order to facilitate promotion and relegation. It’s therefore by no means a given that crowds would improve after a switch to the summer. Indeed crowds in Ireland are slightly lower now than they were when they switched in 2003.
An even more crucial issue, for the Premiership at least, is the UEFA calendar. Top flight matches cannot be scheduled on the same day as any UEFA match dates – which means that every single Champions League and Europa League night is off limits. Given that the Champions League plays on Tuesday and Wednesday, and the Europa League on Thursday, that essentially rules out midweek fixtures on any of those weeks. That immediately kills off 20 (TWENTY!) midweeks. There are also five international double headers which eliminate more dates (we could technically play through these, but many top flight clubs would have players away).
The crucial problem with this is the timing of those midweeks. Both tournaments get through four qualifying rounds in July and August, which means that eight midweeks are immediately off the table. Immediately, your summer season can barely schedule any midweek fixtures; a potential 2016 season would only have one midweek fixture date available between 25th June and 25th September. So you can forget about those mythical weeknights sitting under the sun watching the Premiership. The current winter season has no such issue – from early December to late February every single date is available.
To illustrate this, I’ve put together a hypothetical 2016 calendar. I should note that my calendar doesn’t have any games scheduled during Euro 2016. Technically clubs could play during the tournament, but some clubs may have players playing in the tournament, particularly with the expansion to 24 teams. If Scotland are one of those 24 teams in France, then I doubt many folk would be paying a great deal of attention to Scottish Premiership matches going on at the same time.
Even if we allow the Scottish Cup and League Cup semis and finals to be “doubled up” with league weekends, and allow Round 2 of the League Cup to be played on a UEFA date (as it is currently), the minimum number of matchdays needed for the Scottish Premiership clubs under the current structure is 45. We have 38 league games, 3 Scottish Cup ties (R4, R5 and QF), 2 League Cup ties (R3, R4) and the play-off final. There are 61 available matchdays in 2016, but 17 of those are in December and January. Immediately, we have a major problem. Our “summer football” season would have to either start in late January or finish in early December. Of course, a few minor tweaks might be possible, but the dream of playing from March to November doesn’t look remotely feasible. There are only 38 matchdays available in that period, so we’d have to find 7 extra dates from somewhere.
This doesn’t mean that summer football isn’t possible. We could reduce the number of games played in the season and/or get rid of one of the cups. Sweden and Norway both operate with a 16 team top flight and just one cup competition. This change would come at a financial cost to clubs though. Moving from a 12 team league with 38 games to, for example, a 16 team league with 30 games, would see the number of home games reduced by over 25%, and it’s unlikely attendances would increase by anything like that amount. Any move which costs clubs money is unlikely to be met with much excitement at the SPFL.
Another key argument in favour of summer football is that it could hand our clubs an advantage in European competition by sending them into the qualifiers “match ready”. The flip side of this is that later on in their campaigns, our clubs could potentially be playing crucial group stage matches a few weeks after the season has finished. The switch hasn’t benefited European performances for Irish clubs – they were 39th in the UEFA coefficient table in 2003, and are now 40th.
There has also been very little thought given to the potential logistical issues of finishing the season just as the worst of the weather is starting to set in. During a winter season, if a game gets called off in November it’s no big deal, because it can be caught up later in the season. But if we’re playing a summer calendar, then there is no “later in the season”. Potentially you could have a situation where the last game of the season is called off, and we have to extend the season to fit the game in. In an extreme situation, a club might have an unplayable pitch for a long period (eg Brechin in 2013), meaning the season can’t be finished for weeks.
A move to summer football would quite possibly be the biggest change Scottish football has ever undertaken, and it is therefore hugely important that all of the facts are brought to the table to allow people to make an informed decision. If people strongly believe that summer football is the way to go, then it is possible to make it happen. But there are a number of sacrifices which would have to be made along the way, and I’m not sure that it’s a really a price worth paying.
Written by Craig Anderson (@craig_killie)
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