🔝 The five weirdest moments of 2020 in football | OneFootball

2020 seems like it’s been one long, weird moment.

And sport has not been exempt from the madness.

From an incredibly long list, here’s our top five weird football moments from the past 12 months.

Five days in March sees all football cancelled

We simply cannot mention the strange goings on this year without dedicating a large part of this column to the extraordinary events of the first two weeks in March.

With coronavirus rapidly spreading from its December origins in Asia, it didn’t take long before football across the world was halted.

Games were postponed in Italy, then Ligue 1 called a halt on 8 March before LaLiga joined suit three days later.

The Premier League clash between Arsenal and Manchester City was due to take place on March 10, but was called off after a number of Gunners players were in close contact with Olympiacos owner Evangelos Marinakis, who had tested positive.

Then all hell broke loose as Mikel Arteta became the first truly high-profile figure in English football to contract the virus, thus calling league officials into action.

The Premier League was suspended for a month, the Bundesliga followed, and by 19 March only the Belarussian Premier League was active of all 55 Uefa nations.

The game returns … but not as we know it

Just 10 weeks after it became abundantly clear that football could no longer continue, the game was back – not though, as we had ever seen it before.

The Bundesliga was the first major competition to get back under way, but in empty stadiums and with players having to live in bio-secure bubbles with regular testing on an almost daily basis.

In June the Premier League, LaLiga and Serie A would all follow but without any crowds.

In January, we never thought we’d have to type the words ‘enhanced crowd noise’ or ‘social distance protocols’ and yet by December they’ve become de rigueur for any football reporter.

VAR reaches a new nadir

Admittedly, I’ve never been a fan of Video Assistant Referees.

Call me a luddite (and many have if you see the state of my DMs) but fundamentally altering the fabric of the game for a minute percentile increase in correct decisions just doesn’t sit right.

Before VAR we accepted, some more than others, that referees’ can get some wrong and that grey areas are just a part and parcel of the 90 minutes.

Now, though, there are no grey areas. VAR has broken all our brains and it reached a new nadir in the Premier League this year when Patrick Bamford was given as offside for this.

Much like 2020 itself, the sooner VAR is resigned to the dustbin of history, the better.

Footballers take a stand

Weird, but weird in the best way possible. Weird that it’s rarely happened before and weird that at a time of change, football was at the vanguard.

The killing of George Floyd at the hand of Minneapolis police officials in May caused condemnation across the United States and that anger and call for justice eventually spread worldwide.

It was Marcus Thuram who first took a knee in Borussia Monchengladbach’s game against Union Berlin in May, and that same weekend Jadon Sancho revealed a ‘Justice for George Floyd’ shirt as Borussia Dortmund played Paderborn.

In a league first, the Bundesliga didn’t fine either player despite some calling their actions “politically motivated”.

That paved the way for more players to follow and just a few weeks later, every game in Europe was proceeded by players taking a knee and speaking out on social media against police violence and racially-aggravated assaults.

We, of course, still have a long way to go in this fight, but by December ‘Kick It Out’ – the largest anti-racism group in British football – had received £5m worth of much-needed funding, whilst fans who have booed the pre-kick off action of taking a knee had been rightly banned from Cambridge’s Abbey Stadium.

Small steps, but steps all the same.

The wait is over

Two of England’s biggest clubs. Two narratives that seemed like they might go on forever.

But in 2020, in the total absence of fans, Liverpool and Leeds finally got what they’d been looking for for decades.

Jürgen Klopp’s side claimed the Premier League title, 30 years after their last top-flight success. The Reds had been imperious all season long, and now even the break for lockdown could ultimately stop them waltzing to the title.

Marcelo Bielsa’s men, meanwhile, were arguably the best side the Championship had ever seen and despite some hiccups along the way, won the league by 10 points.

Cue mass celebrations in both cities and joy unbounded.