Easter weekend has been a kingmaker and a wrecking ball throughout English football’s history.
It crowned Manchester United in 1957 and 2001. Leicester and Derby have fallen through its trapdoor in recent seasons. Countless title battles and relegation scraps have been swayed by its classic double-headers at a pivotal stage of the campaign.
Yet we won’t have any of it next season, at least not in the top two tiers. What a crying shame.
Eastertime football is one of our cherished customs dating back to the 1880s. Imagine the reaction, then, when Daily Mail Sport revealed on Tuesday that there will be no Easter football in the Premier League or Championship next season because of a clash with FIFA’s international calendar. Millions of people had read the news within a few hours of it breaking.
The tradition has been hollowed out in the Premier League in recent seasons but for vast swathes of its history, fans of top-level clubs have enjoyed afternoon games with their families on the bank holidays of Good Friday and Easter Monday, largely free from the awkwardness of TV-driven fixture scheduling. It is a privilege and a delight that the EFL still enjoys the double dose of Easter fixtures.
This reporter distinctly remembers one Easter weekend two years ago. On the Friday, a 3-0 win over Rotherham had my hometown team, Preston North End, dreaming of Wembley. By late Monday afternoon, our play-off hopes were punctured after one of our defenders suffered a Steven Gerrard-style slip at Birmingham, where I watched from the away end head in hands.
There will be no Easter Weekend action in the Premier League or Championship next season
Championship clubs still get two matches over the long weekend, but that will be replaced by international fixtures
This is the picture of Easter football which excites fans. A half-week flash where titles are won and lost. A perfectly-timed footballing feast, fuelled with springtime optimism. Some clubs lower down the pyramid see it as the perfect chance to lower ticket prices, pack the house, and encourage the next generation of fans.
Once upon a time, we really made a party of this. Teams used to squeeze three matches into the four-day period, though the last time we had such a bonanza was in 1979.
At some junctures, we had the bright idea of making sides play each other home and away in quick succession. Liverpool thrashed Tottenham 5-2 at Anfield on Good Friday in 1963, but were hammered 7-2 three days later in London. Reds boss Bill Shankly was caught wandering around the car park in a daze afterwards. ‘Bill, 7-2, any injuries?’ a reporter asked. Shankly replied: ‘No injuries, laddy, just a broken heart.’
One time Easter Saturday even played host to an FA Cup final. In 1885, Blackburn beat Scottish side Queen’s Park 2-0 in front of 12,500 spectators at the Kennington Oval. Football then being in a more innocent era, the referee, Major Francis Marindin, was extolled as a man who ‘really knows the rules’. We could do with someone like him these days.
You might ask: why does any of this matter? After all, if we’re after quickfire thrills and spills, we get weeks with two fixtures anyway. Teams that played on Saturday in the Premier League are playing again tonight.
But that misses the point of what Easter football represents. Like FA Cup replays (which now don’t exist in the Competition Proper) and 3pm Saturday kick-offs, it has been part of the fabric of our game for longer than we’ve all been alive.
If we don’t protect these time-honoured traditions, we lose them in a global game fuelled by money. No Premier League club has played two games between Good Friday and Easter Monday since 2012. Do we want that loss to filter down the pyramid?
Some have defended FIFA, arguing that they always have an international break around this time of the season, and that it’s not their fault Easter falls earlier next year. We didn’t have Easter football in 1997, 2005 and 2016 due to FIFA calendar clashes either.
The quick pace of games at a critical part of the season is a recipe for drama; Wayne Rooney has won a Premier League title and been relegated over Easter weekend
Sir Alex Ferguson and Roy Keane lift the Premier League trophy in May 2001, a month after securing the title over Easter weekend
But that’s letting FIFA off the hook too easily. Gianni Infantino’s band of highly remunerated bigwigs did not even consult domestic leagues, according to insiders. That is a brazen move, considering how the Easter football tradition is enjoyed in many other countries as well.
Could leagues have foreseen this move and put a persuasive case to FIFA to adjust the international break by a week, so that it didn’t take in the Easter weekend?
It is lamentable that we will again be deprived of a tradition enjoyed by so many fans. Its importance is being thinned each season, and we miss a treat which our forebears treasured.
Next year, rather than critical clashes at Bramall Lane, Loftus Road, and The Valley, we’ll be served a steaming pile of contrived Nations League tosh. Finland against San Marino to see who might belong to League B in the next cycle. Bon appetit.
One way we can turn this into a positive is by getting out and supporting teams lower down the pyramid. League One and League Two clubs are allowed to postpone fixtures if they get too many players called up for international duty, but they won’t all be in that predicament.
Non-League will, of course, march on as well, so there will be plenty of chances to get your Easter football fix locally. Just don’t expect to see Arsenal blow the Premier League.
