If not now, when? Stars align for another club to ‘do a Leicester’ in 2021

The real-world obstacles of 2020 have created football opportunities for 2021 with a number of clubs around Europe sensing now is their chance for something special

Leicester striker Jamie Vardy (Getty Images)

In the Leicester City dressing room, Brendan Rodgers has been trying to keep a sense of balance. He wants his players to persist with the principles, and be adventurous, but not get distracted by any outside talk. Namely, the possibility of repeating 2016 in 2021.

There’s an irony to that, because other coaches across Europe have been willingly telling their players they can “do a Leicester”. They certainly feel they can defy the usual realities, and break the established order.

That has been the message at Real Sociedad, Lille, Lyon, Milan, Inter, Bayer Leverkusen and Leipzig.

The repeated insistence is that this is a rare chance. The real-world obstacles of 2020 have created football opportunities for 2021.

A congested calendar means the superclubs haven’t been able to train or play in the maximum manner they’d idealise, and the constrained market means they have been left with bloated squads, unable to shift well-paid players they don’t want and overhaul their teams. A staleness has come in. Pressing stats are way down. The highest number for “pressures per 90 minutes” in the Premier League this season is 164.3, and predictably comes from Leeds United. That would have been the 15th best in 2018-19.

Football at the start of 2021 is thereby considerably less intense, and allows more space - in so many senses.

It has opened up so many leagues. All of the Bundesliga, Serie A and Ligue 1 are collectively much more competitive than at any point in the last decade.

There is finally a good chance that Bayern Munich, Paris Saint-Germain and Juventus won’t win titles they have made their own, to go with the fact Real Madrid and - to a greater degree - Barcelona are off the pace in La Liga, as well as the most chaotic Premier League seen since the 1990s.

Within that sense of opportunity, however, there is a severe pressure. That’s for the game, as much as any of these clubs.

This is because the problems finally and fully exposed by the Covid crisis of 2020 have not been solved. Economic inequality has not been addressed. The calendar will eventually start to even out with a vaccine, and return to something like normal. The super-clubs will reassert themselves. Real Madrid are already talking about successfully re-organising their budget so they can afford Kylian Mbappe in the summer of 2021, and Erling Haaland in 2022. Paris Saint-Germain and Manchester City are eyeing Lional Messi. There’s then the traditional way the big clubs respond to failure: by buying big and gutting rivals. Borussia Dortmund know this all too well.

So, it creates a question amid the chaos going into 2021, while making this a huge year for many reasons.

If not now, when? If these clubs don’t win this year, when will they win?

If PSG don’t slip this season, when will they slip? If Juventus don’t slip this season, when they will they slip? If Bayern don’t slip this season, when will they slip?

And if none of them slip? What will that say about the game as a whole?

Such pressures are often why the wealthiest clubs end up winning anyway. Inexperienced title challengers like Real Sociedad, Lille and this Milan don’t know how to deal with it.

All of this comes with the backdrop of negotiations about what the future of the game will look like, much of those talks set to be settled in the coming months.

That includes the model of the post-2024 Champions League, the distribution of European prize money and the economic structure of the English game. Project Big Picture has only started that discussion. There is so much to do, and the fixture chaos caused by the current third wave - especially in the EFL - will only sharpen some of those talks. There are still a lot of ructions to come. Some competitions may yet be greatly disrupted.

If 2020 was the year that completely upended the game in an unprecedented manner, 2021 is set to be the year that shapes it for some time to come.

Along those lines, a decision still has to be made on what will happen with the European Championships.

The situation reflects the uncertainty of real life right now. At the start of the year in which Uefa’s flagship event is going to finally be staged, we still don’t know where it will be. It may well go according to the original schedule, and start in Rome before finishing in London while taking in 10 other venues in between. Or, it may well be moved to one country.

Much will depend on real-world developments, like the extent of the vaccine roll-out.

The Football Association have recently been optimistic that the Wembley games will all take place as planned, with over over 50% attendance. A problem is that Uefa have to make a decision - in order to allow logistics and planning - before we see the effects of a vaccine.

Whatever about where Euro 2020 will be, or for that matter what it should be called, we can be have a more solid idea about what it will look like. It is likely to involve a lot of jaded teams, especially at the top end.

That may foster more even unpredictability there, and it could well be a combination of the 2002 World Cup and Euro 2016. Players at the major clubs will be exhausted after the end of the most intense club season ever seen, to go straight into a bloated European Championships. The possibility of a surprise winner may be even greater than in club football.

The Champions League meanwhile may favour teams who are not involved in domestic title races, in a way that hasn’t really been seen since the mid-2000s.

Whatever happens on the pitch, the great hope for 2021 is what happens off it. That is that supporters properly return, to recreate the spectacle we all know and love. These opportunities on the pitch would only be amplified by proper atmosphere off it.

If 2020 proved that football without fans isn’t quite nothing, 2021 can show that football with fans makes it everything.

The circumstances, after all, make it more likely than at any point in the last decade that at least one club in Europe will enjoy “their Leicester moment”.

It would be glorious, and life-affirming, if supporters were there to celebrate it. You could forgive any lack of balance.