Adelaide United Captain, Michael Jakobsen, is optimistic about the potential return of the Hyundai A-League 2019/20 campaign.
The FFA together with all the Clubs and Professional Footballers Australia (PFA) last week announced a plan for the resumption of the season to begin ideally in mid-July, pending an agreement with Fox Sports.
Training is expected to resume mid-June and run for four weeks as players try to return to a semblance of elite fitness.
A hub model was confirmed as the most practical way of re-starting and finishing the competition which is expected to be based in New South Wales.
Jakobsen was confident that the season would be completed by the end of August.
“I’m pretty sure that the deal we made now is going to come through,” the 34-year-old told reporters at a press conference on Monday.
“And everybody is looking forward to come back and do the right thing for this league in the longer term.
“That has been the biggest factor when we’ve had our chats along the groups in every team, it’s for the benefit of the league’s future.
“We’re doing this coming back and finishing it off, so we’re keen to make it happen.”
Under the proposal, teams will finish their remaining league matches, playing a game every couple of days before the commencement of a finals series where an eventual champion will be crowned.
“Every three days would be alright I think if we’re talking two days, you’re just going to ruin your body,” he said.
“You don’t have enough recovery time so hopefully there’s not going to be that short of a gap in between the games.
“But I think if you have 22 or 23 players available all the time, I think it’s manageable.
“So if you’re playing in Europe and you’re playing Champions League or Europa League and the (domestic) cup as well you might have three or four weeks in a row where you play every fourth day so it is possible.
“But it’s not easy going from one week at the time and now we haven’t trained for a long time to go straight into that set up now is not easy.”
The Danish centre-back admitted finding the motivation to keep fit during this period of inertia coupled with uncertainty surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic quite difficult.
“I can only talk for myself here, for me it has been hard with the motivation,” he explained.
“But I find joys in other things like with the family, suddenly you get a lot more time with them which I’ve not been used to.
“The boys have tried to look at the positives in all of this, but obviously it has been stressful and you don’t know what the future brings.
“Now there’s a bit more clarity and we have a goal now, so I think everybody’s mood now has been getting better.”
