The Lebanese Premier League will hopefully resume in January

In the last days of December, the Lebanese Football Federation, in agreement with most of the clubs, decided that the Lebanese Premier League should restart in January, after three months of inactivity due to political unrest and economic crisis, which threatened to put an early end to the football season in Lebanon.

Only three rounds have been played in September and the first week of October. Then, there was a break caused by the matches of the Lebanese national team. In the meantime, the political and economic situation worsened and the Premier League did not resume. Matches in the Second Division have also been postponed indefinitely, and a decision to restart the competitions has been vainly expected in November, as clubs could not agree on several issues, such as the situation of foreign players and whether two teams should be relegated as before or not.

However, despite the fact that football clubs are still divided concerning some of the issues at stake, the General Meeting and the Executive Committee showed that all clubs are interested to have the competitions back on track as soon as possible. Everybody agreed that the Premier League should resume in January. Some of the matches postponed for various reasons in the first three rounds will be played first, on the 12th of January (Al Ahed - Tripoli) and on the 18th of January (Nejmeh - Bourj). The full start will be in the weekend of the 24th-26th of January, when matches scheduled in matchday 4 will be played, followed in the next weekend by the matches in round 5 and so on. The first half of the season should be finished by mid-March. Games in the second half would be played in the second half of March, in April and May and the whole season should finish at the end of May or the beginning of June.

Two issues were debated fiercely. One of them is the use of foreign players. Due to the general economic situation, it was eventually agreed that foreign players should no longer be allowed to play this season in the Lebanese Premier League and the FA Cup. Many of them have already left the country and contracts are disputed. Nevertheless, two exceptions were admitted, for Al Ahed and Al Ansar, the two teams playing in the AFC Cup. They will be allowed to retain the foreign players in their roster, if they wish, but these clubs may only use the foreign players in the international competitions (AFC Cup) but not in the national competitions.

The second issue concerned relegation. Clubs were still divided, with five clubs supporting the idea of relegation, just like before (two teams should therefore be relegated to the Second Division), and six clubs supporting the idea that no teams should be relegated this season, due to the exceptional circumstances. One club had no position on this issue. As there has been no majority in either way, the matter is still unresolved, but a solution or some kind of compromise should be found in the next weeks, as early as possible, because a competition cannot be disputed without knowing the exact number of relegated teams.