If football helps give people some relief then I look forward to its return, opines Gianluca Vialli
Two-time Scudetto winner and former Chelsea star Gianluca Vialli has revealed that if football can give some people relief then he’s open to the Premier League resuming action. The global COVID-19 pandemic has forced the world into a shutdown with football across the world in lockdown.
While the Bundesliga has officially returned the other three major European leagues are having their own concerns about resuming action. While both the Serie A and the La Liga are moving along slowly, the Premier League has struggled with their Project Restart. The English top flight’s plan to return to action has seen them come under immense criticism for what could potentially be a premature return.
It has seen players, managers and even fans come out with concerns over safety for the players, the staff and their families. Yet despite that, in an interview former Chelsea and Sampdoria striker Gianluca Vialli admitted that “if football could give people some relief” then he would advocate for it’s return back to action. The former Blues star also said that the league needs to be careful in what is an unprecedented situation.
“In times of grief, and when you’re going through a difficult situation like this, some psychologists say we should try to do things that give us pleasure without feeling guilty about it. So if football could be a tool to give people some relief then I look forward to its return,” Vialli told the Guardian.
“That said, I can only imagine what the players are feeling. I could advise them about injury or when they fall out with the manager. I can share my experiences with them. But in this situation I wouldn’t know what to tell them. This is unprecedented. If I was still a player, I would probably find it difficult to focus on football because people are still dying.”