There’s good news for the potential return of crowds to football games next season after successful recent pilot events at Wembley Stadium.
Leicester City and Chelsea contested the recent FA Cup final in front of 21,000 fans at Wembley, with rules in place to help prevent the spread of coronavirus.
The Covid-19 pandemic has meant largely empty stadiums for much of the last year, apart from a few small crowds in some areas of the country before Christmas, and for the final two games of the Premier League season.
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According to the Evening Standard, however, it looks like these events can return safely as zero positive Covid cases have been picked up from the supporters who attended the FA Cup final.
The report explains how other similar events have also gone well due to people needing to provide a negative test for Covid before entering.
A small number of people did test positive after some indoor events, but it has seemed clear for a while now that outdoor activities are safer.
Fans at Wembley were also mostly in masks and distanced, but it’s encouraging that even reduced crowds can get in without trouble until more of the population is vaccinated.
We’ve been lucky that football has remained on our screens during this difficult time, but it is of course not quite the same without the atmosphere of a crowd, so let’s hope we can see even more fans at matches next season after these promising results.