Shorter games under consideration for football's return, says PFA chief

Shorter matches are being considered as part of plans to restart the football season, according to the chief executive of the Professional Footballers’ Association, Gordon Taylor. Fifa has proposed allowing extra substitutions to help players cope with greater fixture congestion after a break without training or competition, and Taylor said games of less than 45 minutes each way were also under consideration. He said mid-June was the earliest realistic restart and added: “The very fact that you are in professional sport you need to be very resilient and you need to be able to bounce back because you will get more setbacks than you will good times. I would like to think that’s how my members are, so it remains in process and we shall just have to wait and see and look at it on a day-by-day basis and see if it’s achievable.” The health secretary, Matt Hancock, told the BBC he was “open” to the Premier League season restarting but that “safety has to be paramount”.