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| Tottenham Hotspur manager Jose Mourinho |
Tottenham Hotspur manager Jose Mourinho believes resuming the Premier League season, halted due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and playing it to completion will be good for the sport.
Soccer in England was suspended indefinitely last month due to the novel coronavirus outbreak, which has caused more than 26,000 deaths in the United Kingdom. Premier League clubs are set to meet on Friday to discuss ways to finish the season.
Spursโ first-team squad returned to the clubโs facilities for individual training sessions this week as they prepare for a possible resumption.
โIf we play the remaining nine matches this season it will be good for every one of us. It will be good for football, for the Premier League,โ Mourinho told Sky Sports.
โIf we play football behind closed doors (without fans) Iโd like to think that football is never behind closed doors.
โWith cameras, it means that millions and millions are watching. So if one day we walk into this empty stadium, it will not be empty, not at all.โ
Mourinho also admitted he โmisses our worldโ with normal life turned upside down by the pandemic.
The Portuguese is living away from his family with members of his Spurs coaching staff and on Wednesday helped to deliver fresh produce from the kitchen garden at the clubโs training ground to the stadium, which has become a food distribution hub.
โI miss football, but I prefer to say I miss our world, like I think we all do,โ he told Sky Sports.
The suspension has given Spursโ injured players such as Harry Kane, Moussa Sissoko and Steven Bergwijn time to recover but Mourinho said he was unsure of how long it would be before they were able to play competitive football again.
โFor them, itโs many, many weeks of injury. And when the injury was arriving at an end, we stopped training,โ Mourinho said.
โI donโt know, they donโt know, we have to wait for the right permission for them to train again in groups to see if they can come back to a normal competition level.โ
Spurs were eighth in the Premier League standings with 41 points, seven points adrift of fourth, before the season was suspended.
REUTERS
