It would work because of reason X and reason Y and reason Z, everyone was told. Don’t worry, there will be regular testing, the public was told. Just go back to your homes and look forward to the sports, they said.
Germany was going to be used as a model on which the Premier League would base its decisions to get the top tier of English football back.
Missing One Thing
If those clever continentals can do it, there’s no reason why the superior Great British Fighting Spirit won’t be able to manage the same thing - they probably thought.
But in all of those conversations in all of those virtual meeting halls in front of all of those bookshelfs, the clever people forgot to legislate for one thing: stupid people.
And we’ve seen what happens when the dim are overlooked: they have the last laugh.
Dumb Actions
Now this isn’t to say that Hertha Berlin forward Salomon Kalou is unintelligent, but he did something that was incredibly unintelligent. The first thing the former Chelsea striker did was to walk up to his teammate and shake them firmly by the hand and interreupting a coronavirus test.
To add insult to injury, he was also walking about shouting ‘corona’.
This is exactly the sort of behaviour that undermines governing bodies attempts to get football back under way, even if the rest of society isn’t in a good place.
Will Happen Again
You can label it as a one-off, but there will always be childish or stupid or arrogant people who don’t think the rules apply to them and who think they can get away with this sort of behaviour.
We’ve seen sex parties and lockdown breeches a-plenty already, who is to say there won’t be more if the Premier League tries to get back underway?
It just adds another layer of complexity to the issue. You can do all the planning in the world, but in the end you can plan for stupidy and that’s what will derail these finely thought out schemes.