Public criticism of the resumption of professional football hardly gets through to those affected in the Bundesliga. Karlsruhe midfielder Marc Lorenz has now complained that "there is a lack of preparation and a feeling for the health of the players".
Frankfurt / Main (dpa) - Professional football trembles against the restart in the 1st and 2nd Bundesliga. After the cases at Dynamo Dresden, the concept of the German Football League is more in question than ever.
The publication of the third series of tests by the German Football League was still pending on Monday. While the teams are preparing for the nine remaining game days in the one-week quarantine, the health authorities are taking center stage.
A health expert defended the different consequences of the corona cases at 1. FC Köln and Dynamo Dresden on Sunday evening in the ARD program "Anne Will". "My plea is: trust the people who do it! They have the training, they can also decide and they can differentiate just as well, in one case it is so and in the other," said the chairwoman of the Federal Association of Doctors and doctors of the public health service, Ute Teichert.
At the bottom of the league in Dresden, two corona virus tests had recently been positive. The entire team has to be in quarantine for two weeks because the team training has already started. This means that two second division games had already been canceled before the expected restart. At the Bundesliga club Cologne, only the people who tested positive had been sent to isolation.
"The cases in Cologne and Dresden are different," said Teichert. "In Cologne, the players concerned were identified as contact persons. I know that the health department is very involved with 1. FC Köln." This authority would look at the soccer operations there as well as at nursing homes or community accommodations. At Dresden it was already the third series of tests, and at the first there was a corona case. "It is then clear that the infection was passed on," said Teichert.
If even more local health authorities react to positive cases like in Dresden, regulated professional football could quickly become utopian in May or June. Because as soon as the ball rolls again, two whole teams would quickly be involved in a positive test. The DFL concept only provides quarantine for infected players.
The DFL published the results of the first series of tests last week. Accordingly, there were ten Corona cases in 1724 people tested, in the second row there were two, one of them with the second division club Erzgebirge Aue - but the next tests were negative there.
"If Dresden now goes into quarantine for 14 days, that's no reason to question the continuation of the second division completely," said DFL managing director Christian Seifert in ZDF's "Current Sports Studio". He announced talks with the second division teams this week to discuss the new situation. Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) and the Prime Ministers gave the green light for ghost games last week - in accordance with the hygiene and safety concept of the DFL "Task Force Sports Medicine / Special Game Operation".
Meanwhile, after Cologne's Birger Verstraete and Neven Subotic from Union Berlin, another professional has commented critically on the continuation of the game. In the DFL concept, Marc Lorenz from the second division club Karlsruher SC lacks "the preparation and the feeling for the health of the players. I think that no care is taken." The 31-year-old said this to the "Badische Latest News" (Monday) and predicted: "The players will be flat after 60 minutes. Even the five changes decided will not help. Then the fatigue will come and then the serious injuries. It is for me a push through regardless of losses. There are many who play for a new contract.
Regardless of other obstacles, DFL boss Christian Seifert had already spoken on Saturday of "absolute emergency operation", which should be resumed in professional football in view of the economic constraints. The 36 clubs in the 1st and 2nd league lose more than 91 million euros due to the ghost games according to a "kicker" report. For the Bundesliga clubs there was a loss of 69.661 million euros, for the clubs in the second division 22.029 million euros, as calculated by the specialist magazine based on the ticket income from the previous season.