The Warm-Up: What would it take to tempt Guardiola back to Barcelona?

Back in 2003, Joan Laporta was just a smooth-talking businessman with a hare-brained dream, the upstart trying to become president of Barcelona on the promise that he would sign David Beckham for the Catalan masses. Ultimately of course Beckham went up the road, but Laporta pulled another rabbit out of the hat, bringing in Ronaldinho instead and, love Becksy as we do, that one turned out rather better for Barca.

Now, Laporta is back, looking to take advantage of the shambles on wheels that is FC Barcelona, a club that at the start of this pandemic was revealed to have such chaotic finances that it required Leo Messi to forego almost all of his pay AND make donations in order to keep the lights on, and ensure some of the less fortunate staff members were paid.

And he’s got another big name in mind. Not a player this time. A manager. Yep, that one.

“I’m working to introduce myself as a presidential candidate. I’ve been president before and I’m excited to be back,” Laporta said on Catalan station TV3.

“I would very much like Guardiola to come back, but now he is at City and it is a decision that Pep should take. He is a benchmark for Barcelona and many Catalans would like him to coach Barca again. At the right time, I will speak to the person we think should be a Barca coach from 2021.”

The question then becomes: what would it take to tempt Guardiola back? Stacks of cash? As many tasteful cardigans as he can fit in his wardrobe? The promise of them inventing a time machine and bringing back the 20-year-old Leo Messi so he can have another go at the first time around?

The time is coming. Football is on the way back. Is it responsible? No! Is it safe? Probably not! Will we lap it up like starving kittens? Yes!

On Monday it was announced that Serie A clubs would be returning to training on May 18, ahead of a prospective restart date at some stage in June. And La Liga have been rather more specific than that even, citing June 12 as a potential date for football to come back in Spain.

“We don’t know [when we can start], no one knows the date,” Javier Tebas, La Liga head honcho, said on Monday. “It will depend on spikes in the numbers and all the rules being followed. The virus is still there but if it can be on 12 June, so much the better. If we all follow the health rules I don’t think we’re going to have any problem.

“The idea is to finish on 31 July and that August can be left for European competitions. Those dates can [then] also be used for the play-offs [in Spain]. There will be league games every day, as already happens in March and April with a normal fixture list.”

Meanwhile, in England, Danny Rose has voiced the concerns that we suspect a lot of footballers have, specifically that they are being used and pushed around to satisfy the whims of others.

“The government is saying we are bringing football back because it is going to boost the nation’s morale,” Rose said. “I don’t give a f*** about the nation’s morale, people’s lives are at risk.

“Football shouldn’t even be spoke about coming back until the numbers have dropped massively. It’s b*******. We’ll see. I’m supposed to tested on Friday so we will just have to wait and see.”

There would be something grim but welcome about the idea of Newcastle’s takeover being called off, not for any particular moral reasons, but because their potential ownership is involved in nicking Premier League footage from Richard Keys.

While many have cited the Saudi Arabian governments scandalous record on human rights as the most serious obstacle in them buying Newcastle from Mike Ashley, BeIn Sports and Keysey have been much more exorcised about their involvement in a fairly brazen rights pirating scheme called BeoutQ, which essentially just robs the live feed from the Qatar-based beIN and broadcasts it to whoever wants it.

And it looks like the latter argument might have more luck interrupting the whole thing than the former. The Guardian reports that a new document is being reviewed by Premier League lawyers which outlines just how brazen the pirating scheme is, thus ‘whether it further calls into question whether the consortium passes its owners’ and directors’ test, which states that digital piracy is prohibited.’

Would this be welcome? Probably. It’s the equivalent of getting Al Capone on tax evasion, but at least it would stop one of the most beloved clubs in the Premier League being used as a PR tool by a murderous regime. You’ve got to take what little victories you can, however they arrive.

We can see a future as a straight-talking pundit in Mings’s future.

As you probably know, if you wanted a live football fix over the last couple of weeks you had to get bang into the Belarus Premier League, who blithely ploughed on through the coronavirus crisis, taking the lead from their president who declared the whole thing a hoax and recommended drinking vodka to combat it. Now, games between FC Minsk and Neman Grodno, and Arsenal Dzerzhinsk and Lokomotiv Gomel have been postponed because…yep, you guessed it! A load of their players have got coronavirus! Hooray! And to think this might not have happened had they stopped like most other vaguely sensible leagues had!

On this day in 1990, an absolute humdinger of an FA Cup final as Ian Wright comes off the bench to be an absolute hero, as per, and score twice for Crystal Palace to grab a 3-3 draw against Manchester United.

In the Guardian, Jonathan Liew looks at why Kyle Walker and other footballers are receiving so much opprobrium for breaking social distancing rules.