Football in scheduling difficulties: "Everything completely sewn on edge"

Corona has been forcing amateur footballers to take a break for a long time.

It should actually start again in spring, with the League Cup.

But circle game director Heinz Eckl is skeptical.

County - There is only a tiny little chance left.

Heinz Eckl knows that it makes sense to believe in it, even if the situation is almost hopeless.

When he was still on the pitch himself, the now 63-year-old from Altenstadt experienced it often enough.

A game was only over when the referee gave it a whistle.

Even if only a few seconds remained, Eckl never gave up, he just kept going.

"I've always been a fighter," he describes himself.

Game director Eckl is skeptical about the start on March 6th

Today he is the game director in the Zugspitze district, and the clock is running mercilessly against him again.

However, it is not about minutes or seconds, but about weeks and days - but time passes.

"March 6th is 99.9 percent no longer possible for me," says Eckl.

He assumes that the league cup cannot start at the appointed time.

Actually, he had planned everything meticulously.

He invested 150 working hours last summer to design the competition for his area of ​​responsibility and to get it ready to go.

That was four full weeks of work and a lot of heart and soul that he invested.

The functionary from Altenstadt was happy to do this.

Most of the clubs were enthusiastic, but then "this damn virus", as he calls it, thwarted his plans.

Corona has changed a lot, also in the way the Bavarian Football Association (BFV) sees itself.

Last spring, two-thirds of the clubs voted in favor of the association's recommendation to end the season despite Corona.

You only had one option.

To vote with “yes” or “no”, there was no other alternative.

The Presidium confirmed this vote with 100 percent approval.

The optimism of the officials was great despite the pandemic.

So they offered the clubs not only to end the round regularly, but also to play a second competition at the same time: the league cup.

"We wanted to fill the open time window," Eckl explains the ambitious project.

League Cup as another competition for the clubs

But this damn virus was not behaving the way the superiors wanted it to do, it just didn't play along.

Soon the number of open time windows became smaller and smaller.

“Individuals know better and better”, Eckl replies annoyed to the critics, “they should do it themselves first”.

He himself is not responsible for the decisions made by the association's headquarters, he just has to implement them.

In addition, the autumn did not go as those responsible had imagined.

When the season restarted on September 19, the original schedule was already two weeks behind.

The footballers did not play more than four games in the championship, and they weren't much more in the league cup.

For two competitions, the time was simply too short to make it.

“Had we had three more weeks, it would have been great,” admits Eckl.

But that didn't exist because the country was sent back into lockdown on November 2nd, which no one can say today when it will end.

"Now you can throw everything in the trash can," says Eckl, the previous plans are invalid.

He doesn't dare to predict how things will go with the League Cup.

The top of the association has yet to evaluate this.

There are two alternatives for the circle game master.

"Either you kill the competition or you change it."

Even the unfinished championship is increasingly in danger of remaining one.

At the beginning of the week, the Chancellor, who always weighed up her words, indicated that if it had to be, the lockdown would be extended until Easter.

"If the government categorically says no, we have a problem," said Eckl.

Then the scheduled dates can no longer be kept, especially since "everything is completely sewn to the edge" when the round is to end on May 15th.

"Maybe it will come to the point that we have to end the season," he admits in view of the current situation that the worst case scenario is also possible.

The new season in the BFV is scheduled to start on July 1, 2021

It is clear that the new season should start on July 1st and the clubs and game management also need a certain amount of lead time to get their things sorted.

This is usually a big blow to a GM who takes the greatest pleasure in making hundreds of kickers enjoy the weekend.

Eckl loves his position as district game director, which he has held since 2006.

Back then, Germany experienced its summer fairy tale during the World Cup, today it is living through a never-ending nightmare.

"There are more important things than football," says Eckl soberly.

From the mouth of a game master it sounds just as strange as if a pastor were to say that there are more important things than God in this world.

But Eckl himself experienced that Corona cannot be something abstract, but something very concrete in life. In March, the epidemic did not stop at his own family. His brother was so badly affected that he was even briefly in the intensive care unit. In addition, his wife and daughter were also infected. "I know that this is no fun," emphasizes Eckl. He is very well aware of the worries that many footballers have about their health or their economic well-being, should the ball roll again quickly in the spring. Eckl may have been a fighting pig, but he was never an ideologue. "When we play, it has to make sense and be defensible," he says. There is no other way to get rid of the damn virus.