Queen Elizabeth II passed away on September 8, 2022; according to the New York Times, the royal family publicly announced her death online but kept her cause private, only saying that she passed away peacefully. After she died, her oldest son took over the throne as King Charles III. The New York Times also provided a statement from King Charles III: “The death of my beloved Mother, Her Majesty the Queen, is a moment of the greatest sadness for me and all members of my family.” After her death, the UK mourned for ten days, and then the mourning ended with her funeral, which occurred on Monday, September 19, 2022. Large crowds of the UK population and large quantities of UK police officers attended the Queen’s funeral, which is why many events were postponed due to a lack of security.

Due to Queen Elizabeth’s death, many soccer matches throughout the Europa League were postponed or rescheduled in honor of her death. One of the major games that had been delayed due to the Queen’s death was the Arsenal vs. PSV soccer game. This game could determine whether or not PSV could take Arsenal’s second-place rank or if Arsenal could defend their position in the rankings.

In a recent game, with less than half an hour remaining, Eddie Nketiah scored the winning goal against Zurich, which put Arsenal towards the top of Group A within the Europa League after PSV tied against Bodo/Glimt 1-1 in Eindhoven. According to the Europa League schedule, Arsenal was supposed to host PSV in the Europa League group stage on September 15, 2022. 

However, UEFA confirmed that the new date set for the match is October 20, 2022. 

But, according to The Sporting News and UEFA, this reschedule was only made possible due to the premier league rescheduling a match between Arsenal and Manchester City, which was supposed to take place on October 19, 2022. UEFA stated, “UEFA would like to thank the Premier League and the clubs concerned for their flexibility and their cooperation in the rescheduling of the UEFA Europa League match, which had been postponed due to the impossibility for local police forces to guarantee its secure staging.”

Fans of the other teams may feel anger that they have to wait to watch their team due to a postponing of another team. They may feel as if the leagues don’t care as much about their team because of how they specifically moved their team, when really it may not be like that. Overall, fans may be emotionally triggered because of the possible movements of their team’s games, which may lead to things being brought onto social media in a negative way.