The FA Community Shield 2020/21 season match date revealed

The English FA has confirmed that the Community Shield, which is usually the curtain-raiser for a new season will take place at Wembley on Saturday, the 29th of August 2020.

The traditional curtain-raiser for the new season will see Premier League champions, Liverpool, play either Arsenal or Chelsea, who meet in this Saturday’s FA Cup final.

It has been reported that the match could welcome a restricted number of supporters into Wembley as part of plans for supporters to make a socially-distanced return to sports venues more widely from 1 October.

The FA are in talks with the government to allow supporters to watch the game.

They want the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to give the green light to the Community Shield being the maiden test event involving football, which would allow a reduced capacity of around 15,000-20,000 to be present while observing social distancing guidelines.

The government have suggested they would be keen to open up sports events to fans from the start of October, but only after they are satisfied by the outcome of a series of test runs across a number of sports.

Cricket, racing, and snooker are the first of those, but football is the key one for the government to get right and the FA believe they have come up with the right proposals to ensure their Community Shield is the match chosen.

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Sports Minister Nigel Huddlestone says: “The pilot schemes are really important so we can hit that target of October 1 to open up more sport and get people back in stadia which is what everybody wants.

“We are looking for further testing as the weeks go by but so far so good.

No Premier League games have featured fans since Leicester’s 4-0 thumping of Aston Villa on 9 March with matches taking place in eerie silence since the coronavirus lockdown.

The match will be immediately followed by an international break from 2 to 1o September.

The announcement comes after the Premier League revealed last week that the 2020/21 season would start on September 12 and run until May 23, 2021.

The EFL has also confirmed the Championship, League One and League Two seasons will commence on the same weekend, with their regular seasons ending on the weekend of  8 May 2021.