Part 1
It will be exactly 100 days between when the Premier League was paused and when it will resume, but on June 17 we will finally see some football take place in England’s top division.
Hello and welcome to the Total Football podcast. I am your host Declan Harte and joining me is Andrew Conway.
Andrew, how are we feeling?
Part 2
Before we dig into the Premier League’s return, we must discuss the Bundesliga title race which was effectively ended with Bayern Munich’s 1-0 victory over Borussia Dortmund last week.
Staying in Germany, the DFB have said they will not sanction Marcus Thuram, Jadon Sancho or Achraf Hakimi for their messages for the Black Lives Matter movement, which is really the bare minimum response.
FIFA President Gianni Infantino has called for “common sense” from domestic FAs when it comes to sanctioning players for political messages.
"For the avoidance of doubt, in a FIFA competition the recent demonstrations of players in Bundesliga matches would deserve an applause and not a punishment," Infantino said in a FIFA statement.
"We all must say no to racism and any form of discrimination. We all must say no to violence. Any form of violence.”
Which is just as well FIFA disbanded its own anti-racism taskforce in 2016, which members of the taskforce warned against. Since then, we have seen racist incidents go severely under-punished across the game.
Premier League clubs have gotten involved, with Chelsea and Liverpool both staging moments in remembrance of George Floyd, but both clubs have had their issues with racism too which every club should be addressing. Police brutality makes up only one of many ways in which POC are discriminated against, and football is not immune to racism
Part 3
On Thursday May 28 it was announced that Project Restart had its end date. It is now two weeks until Premier League football makes its long awaited return, with Aston Villa versus Sheffield United and Manchester City against Arsenal being the first two games back. The Guardian outlined six problems that the 20 teams will face between now and the end of the season. We will never know how the season would have played out normally, but under the given circumstances who do we expect to thrive and who do we think might fall under the cracks?
Closing
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