The Portuguese football season can restart behind closed doors on the last weekend of May, the country’s prime minister said Thursday while announcing plans to relax the coronavirus lockdown.
The country’s top flight
Primeira Liga and the final of the Portuguese Cup are the “only exception” to a
ruling that has kept all other professional sport suspended, Antonio Costa told
reporters.
Costa added that a
restart to the season, which has been suspended since mid-March, is subject to
approval by health authorities and the selection of stadiums that can satisfy
requirements.
With 10 matches
remaining Porto are top of the league, one point ahead of reigning champions
Benfica.
Braga and Sporting
Lisbon are 13 and 15 points back respectively.
Porto and Benfica
are also set to take each other on in the Portuguese Cup final, which is yet to
be rescheduled after being postponed from its original date of May 24.
The suspension to
the season has hit Portuguese football’s finances hard with one of the league’s
main sponsors, media and telecoms group Altice, trying to suspend its payments
to first and second division clubs.
Sporting’s fragile
financial situation has led to the club cutting player pay by 40 percent and
putting almost all of its staff on a partial unemployment scheme since
mid-April.