Some authors of this editorial have recently published a call for awareness about the health consequences (e.g. increased injury risk) of home confinement in sport programming (Sarto et al. 2020). The main message of that editorial can be summarised as follows: We know that training restrictions and constraints may cause physiological decline. The increased risks are likely to be higher if the time needed to counteract this deconditioning is not granted before returning to competition. This may especially be the case for individuals whose level of training during home confinement has been constrained. Therefore, in deciding how and when to return to competition, it is important that sport organizations are aware that their decisions can have health consequences such as increased injury risk. With most of us either directly or indirectly deriving benefit from the football industry, we are aware of the substantial financial and social pressures for resuming competitions. In the current environment, any decision regarding the recommencement of competition is difficult as there are numerous risks (i.e. financial, social and health) that must be considered and balanced (Carmody et al. 2020; Corsini et al. 2020; Duarte Muñoz and Meyer 2020). If the key decision makers are fully informed about the risks of these decisions, and all key stakeholders are willing to share the responsibility, this is perfectly fine. As stated in a famous quotation (wrongly) attributed to the Florentine political theorist Niccolò Macchiavelli: `The ends justify the means`. However, in the aforementioned editorial we deliberately chose not to provide recommendations for best approaches to return to competition. In contrast, there have been some articles providing suggestions on how to return to training and play after the COVID19 home confinement (Eirale et al. 2020; Jukic et al. 2020; Mohr et al. 2020). Although we commend others who have tried to provide recommendations for the return to competition, in this editorial we explain why we believe that providing specific recommendations in this situation is too challenging and generic advice may be not completely helpful.
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