As Covid chaos strikes again, maybe Christmas should be cancelled - The Warm-Up

As many of you reading this probably do as well, The Warm-Up views a good portion of life through the prism of football. For instance, passages of time turn in four-year circles to correspond to the World Cup. ‘When was your cousin’s wedding? Ah that’s right, the summer of Brazil 2014 wasn’t it?’

And its highly unscientific barometer for the pandemic works in much the same way. Just how much Covid is ripping through the population before it fully shows in the daily confirmed figures? Well, just take a look at the latest test reporting from elite-level football.

It’s not an unreasonable proposition. Professional footballers are a not insignificant number of people and they are also highly tested. Large outbreaks correspond to moments the virus is at large in the population too. Just think back to March 2020 and the moment football stopped: when a succession of infections ended up with Mikel Arteta catching Covid. Then when the second wave was about to hit, cases again flared up last winter.

If this week is anything to go by, it’s no wonder Boris Johnson had to interrupt his busy Christmas party schedule (Ed: cheese and wine events, definitely not Christmas parties) to get in front of the nation and plead for extensive public cooperation and rule-following even at a time when his own government have *literally* laughed in the faces of such rules.

We already knew Leicester and Tottenham were managing outbreaks, the latter of which forced matches against Rennes and Brighton to be called off following a rather harrowing press conference from Antonio Conte. And last night The Athletic was reporting that Manchester United and Aston Villa were also contending with Covid cases, to go alongside QPR and West Brom in The Championship. United's game against Brentford on Tuesday is under review.

The Mail is this morning reporting that the Christmas schedule is “under serious threat” with Covid in danger of "RAVAGING" the festive fixture list. Understandably so given what we know about the transmissibility of the new variant. Which leads us to ask questions we hoped we might not have to again: should we consider a break in play, or a suspension on fans attending matches, if society is contending with what Boris Johnson warned would be a “tidal wave” of omicron?

If some of the more worrying projections about omicron hold then there won’t be a choice to be made. If the NHS is in peril of being overwhelmed by cases then even if outdoor events are far less generous to the virus, it will be hard to make a case for any top-level sport going ahead, with all the mixing it requires even to get to stadiums.

For some, Christmas as a concept may be indivisible from Christmas football matches. But if it really comes down to it, with the pandemic not far off two years old and no end seemingly in sight right now, The Warm-Up knows which one it would prefer to be cancelled.

It doesn't say this lightly. It went to a Premier League game on Saturday and thoroughly enjoyed it. But it all feels a bit 'March 2020' at the moment. Football might be the prism through which we view the world, but it's not the most important thing in it.

The Premier League dialled down the hype on Super Sunday with none of the big six in action, perhaps not coincidentally while the attention of the sporting world was elsewhere with the thrilling end to the Formula 1 season.

And yes, for a brief afternoon the Warm-Up was extremely invested in safety car procedure and the inner workings of a vivid character named Michael Masi, who like the Greek gods apparently cruelly toys with mere humans at will.

And then Conor Gallagher erupted onto our timelines to remind us what the best sport really is. The Warm-Up would be lying if it said it had watched more than about 2% of Everton’s 3-1 defeat to Crystal Palace, but a brief glimpse of Conor Gallagher is all you need to know this is a superstar in the making. He’s the youngest player to score six or more goals in the Premier League this season and his second against Everton was an absolute beauty.

The result leaves Rafa Benitez looking sweatily at a record which reads: ‘seven defeats from nine matches’. And after director of football Marcel Brands was called into an unscheduled meeting with HR earlier this week, Benitez now knows the buck stops completely with him. Any firewall he had has been rapidly dismantled.

In truth Everton’s terrible form is probably showing up some structural issues as much as it is any limitations on Benitez’s part, primarily a terrible recruitment strategy. Sunday’s lesson was clear: just loan whichever prodigious young player is next off the Chelsea production line.

It’s the draw for the last-16 of the Champions League at 11am this morning as Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City and Manchester United all represent Premier League interests. You can follow that one live with us.

A reminder how it works: seeded teams will be drawn against unseeded teams and two sides from the same country can’t face each other. And that’s about it.

This is all fine and well until someone hurls a giant Pikachu and someone gets hurt.

Europe’s Pretty Young Things were displaying their talents last night in two of the showpiece fixtures on the continent. The headline event was the Madrid derby as Real won 2-0 over Atletico to cement their leadership of La Liga, with Vinicius Jr given a standing ovation by the Bernabeu after setting up both goals, including this for Karim Benzema:

It’s been an extraordinary season for the Brazilian, who ahead of the derby spoke of his desire to get on a level with the true greats of his generation.

"To be at the level of Haaland or Mbappe is complicated because they are great players and they're always scoring a lot of goals and giving assists and playing some of the best football and I want to be there too," Vinicius told ESPN. "So to get to that level, I still have to work hard but to play with Madrid, it's always like that. You have to be calm, you must be patient, to do things well and in the right way. But if I continue like this, and all is well with the team, then of course, I will be among the best."

And giving a timely demonstration of just how high that particular bar is was Kylian Mbappe, scorer of two goals to condemn his former side Monaco to defeat and leave PSG 13 points clear at the top of the table.

Sticking on a European theme, here’s Jonathan Wilson in The Guardian explaining how things are going horribly wrong (again) for Jose Mourinho. Does he have a slightly out-of-shape young left-back to blame it all on in Rome?

“Roma sat seventh in the league before this weekend’s fixtures, nine points off Champions League qualification and eight points worse off than at the equivalent stage last season, a situation, in the space of four days, Mourinho had blamed on a referee, injuries, the media, fate and his own players. At which point the temptation is to check the calendar. But no, it is still 2021: Mourinho has been at Roma for only six months. It’s just that the doom cycle comes round quicker and quicker these days. Once, back near the beginning of his reign, these things took three years. A season to build, a season of fulfilment, a season of recrimination and acrimony. But the friction started to get earlier and earlier until at Tottenham it happened after 18 months. At Roma, it has taken barely 18 weeks.”

Will Roma go full Mourinho? We will have live updates from their Serie A match against Spezia tonight! And a reminder that at 11am it’s the Champions League draw.