Kaveh Solhekol

because obviously in those games they would be potentially I mean basically they'd be losing home advantage in those games so it's something that they are a bit concerned about and the grounds that would be used we don't know which grounds they are but it's safe to assume that they would be grounds that are away from city centers that are not in an area where there's lots of housing

So, you know, you're talking about grounds, for instance, West Ham, Brighton, the King Power, Old Trafford.

Those are the kind of grounds that are being looked at.

And I think they also

and need grounds that are quite modern.

So it'll be easier to have social distancing between the players and the squads and all the other people who will be at those games.

But it is quite contentious, this whole issue of playing at neutral grounds.

But I think it's the only way that football can really restart because you wouldn't be able to get licences

to play games at all 20 grounds at the moment.

It would be much easier for the authorities if games were just being played at 8 or 10 grounds, and it would be much easier just to make those grounds totally safe.

And there's also the issue, which I'm not sure if it's a bit of a red herring, that some people are concerned that if games were played at clubs' own grounds,

that fans would turn up outside because they wanted to be there now personally i don't think that would happen i think fans are sensible enough that if they're told to stay away and stay at home they wouldn't just turn up outside grounds but that is another concern why um people are looking at playing these games at neutral venues we saw that happen with a psg game didn't we just at the start of this um but i guess people's attitudes and uh

realization of how serious this issue has probably changed quite a bit since that time yeah i think what happened uh with psg was was at the start of the pandemic when people maybe weren't aware of quite what a serious situation it was but i tend to think that that fans are

you know, law abiding, just like everybody else in society.

And if they were told to stay away from games, I'm pretty sure they wouldn't turn up outside grounds.

I think what's interesting as well is I was speaking to a few people who work in football.

And I was making a sort of flippant point that, you know, they must be at home with not a lot to do at the moment.

And they made the point to me that actually they don't think they've ever been this busy before.

in their lives because there is so much going on behind the scenes and there is so much to prepare for i mean the first thing they have to prepare for is to restart training and you know that is going to be complicated as well i think the best case scenario is that training could start in perhaps two weeks time but obviously so many measures would be have to

be put in place for that to happen.