Football needs a cultural revolution to survive a post-pandemic world

The pandemic forced the beautiful game to take a long hard look in the mirror, and it didn’t like what it saw. The entire system is broken and needs to be reset, reports Melissa Reddy

Tranmere fans watch the action from the stands during the Sky Bet League Two match at Prenton Park, Birkenhead (PA)

In mid-March, when everything as we knew it was suddenly reshaped by the coronavirus pandemic, a group of financial experts working in football hoped that the game would use the enforced break in play to finally pay attention to its plethora of ills, to sanitise itself. “This is the opportunity to stop sleepwalking into the future,” Professor Simon Chadwick, the global director of Eurasian Sport, told The Independent. “The current woes can bring about a cultural revolution. Football needs it.”

While there could be no certainty over the effects of Covid on the industry or an inclination of how long the hiatus would last, the game was finally forced to have a hard look at itself.

The entertainment and the income stopped with the spotlight switching to the mechanisms behind the show. It became very clear, very quickly that English football was far from sustainable.