CAPE TOWN – Former Manchester United defender has called for the Premier League season to be declared null and void as it’s unlikely to return in the beginning of March after it was suspended until then due to the spread of the coronavirus.
What to do with the Premier League title has created a lot of talking points since the season was suspended with Liverpool on the cusp of winning their first championship in 30 years.
While many have called on Liverpool to be handed the crown, others have felt there is much more at stake than the top of the Premier League, with the entire football pyramid in England affected by the suspension.
There have even been suggestions that the season would be completed behind closed doors.
“I just think the Premier League should be void. Void it,” Ferdinand said during a Q&A session on Instagram earlier in the week.
“I know there’s going to be a lof of Liverpool fans going, ‘Oh Rio, it’s just because you used to play for Man United’.
“I just don’t see a way that can be done where health isn’t compromised. Simple as that. All this behind closed doors business – uou’re still going to have players there. Are the players not part of society?
“There are players who are going to go down with the illness who might not have recovered, or catch it from someone then it spreads to other players. It won’t be fair. It’s not a level playing field,” said Ferdinand.
“I just don’t feel it’s right. There are going to be people in the stadium [like] security. It puts everyone at risk. All this ‘oh we’re going to win this’ or ‘so-and-so might go down’… you’ve got to put those type of things to one side.
“This is about life and death situations, about society in the wider grand scheme of things. Football, it ain’t that serious in that sense,” he concluded.
But, former Liverpool star Steve Nicol insisted it didn’t make any sense voiding the season so close to the end.
“There’s ten games to go. Listen, if we were only ten games in, I would have absoliutely no problem with voiding the season,” the former Scotland international who spend 13 years at Anfield said on ESPN FC.