Football across Europe and the world has largely come to a halt due to the coronavirus outbreak, but some of the top leagues are reportedly ready to return to action in May.
Many fans around the globe miss the beautiful game, but it seems some leagues and clubs are now putting measures into place for the ball to roll again – albeit behind closed doors.
The German Bundesliga seems closest to kicking off again, with all German top-flight clubs having returned to training in small groups of players on 6 April.
The league's board is understood to be exploring resuming games without spectators from 9 May.
"If we can play games, it is to be expected that they will be without fans for some time. Maybe even into the new season or until the end of the year," Bundesliga chief executive Christian Seifert said last month, as quoted by Forbes.
On Monday, two of the country's leading politicians backed the plans presented by Bundesliga.
"The prerequisite is that there is a well thought-out concept. What the DFL (which organises the Bundesliga) has presented these past few days shows that protective measures are in place. I could imagine that we can go back to football under ghost games," Armin Laschet, minister-president of Nordrhein-Westfalen, told Bild.
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Bavaria's minister-president Markus Soeder added: "It is conceivable that we might be able to play such a ghost round at the earliest from 9 May. A weekend with football is much more bearable than a weekend without football."
Ultimately, though, the federal government will decide, and a meeting between league leaders with state and federal government on 23 April will likely determine the Bundesliga's fate.
Meanwhile, France's Ligue 1 is considering a plan for the remainder of the season to be played between 17 June and 25 July, according to Bloomberg.
Spain's LaLiga is considering three possible return dates – 29 May, 6 June and 28 June – while Serie A clubs are hoping to resume play in Italy by the end of May, as per the same report from Bloomberg.
Premier League clubs decided in a meeting last week Friday that the season must be finished as soon as "public safety conditions allow", without naming an explicit date.
Ultimately, the rest of Europe's top leagues will look to Germany, who have not been hit as hard as the likes of Italy, Spain and England by COVID-19, and how the Bundesliga's plans to resume pan out.
