The Bundesliga is advancing - and will continue its season from Saturday. Karl-Heinz Rummenigge expects an “audience of billions”, but not in the stadiums, because they are empty. And almost everything else is different, even goals can only cheer players in a very special way due to hygiene reasons.
Munich - It starts again, first in Dortmund, Leipzig, Hoffenheim, Düsseldorf, Augsburg and Frankfurt, there are the Saturday games. The television pictures will be more important than ever, because no fans in the arenas are allowed to watch football. But even the people who work for TV production do not yet know whether they will all get to their jobs.
Entry to the stadium is like entering the United States. If you want to go in, you have to fill out a questionnaire. It's just not a matter of whether the entry applicant runs a drug kitchen or plans terrorist acts. The question is: Have you had "currently and in the last 14 days" fever, cough, headache, neck pain, body aches, were you in a corona area outside of Germany, were you in contact with an infected or suspicious person?
Anyone who ticks yes in the "Symptoms Questionnaire" will not be admitted. If you have no, you stay in the game. But there is still the measurement with the ear thermometer. The hygiene representative of the home club is consulted at 38 degrees and decides on admission.
Football from May 16 will be different from the way it was last played in the Bundesliga on March 8. Up to the 25th matchday of the 2019/20 season there was a fight for victory and the place in the table, from the 26th for pure economic survival. Less media and sponsorship revenue without gaming. Christian Seifert, Managing Director of the German Football League (DFL), in which the 36 clubs and corporations are organized, says: "The Bundesliga as we know it would no longer exist."
She calls the phase that begins now "special game mode". And thereby refutes the political language regulation that football should ensure "a piece of normalcy". The state of emergency is described on each of the 51 pages that comprise the DFL hygiene concept. It also applies to the players - and not only during their quarantine stays on closed hotel floors throughout the week, but also in the stadium.
They have to wear face masks in the cabin, and if they are only replacements, they must be on the bench. In the player tunnel, both teams should not stand at the same time and wait for them to be allowed on the lawn, they should arrive with a time delay. When a goal is scored, it is forbidden to hug. Elbows to elbows - more is not allowed, and imagine this when you have a goal that will decide the district derby between Dortmund and Schalke on Saturday or later in the remaining season about championship and relegation.
The term “ghost games” cannot be found in official communication. For the DFL it is “games without audience participation”, Fritz Keller, the president of the German Football Association (DFB), who adheres to the DFL concept with the third division and the women's Bundesliga, speaks of “living room games” - to everyone Fall there will be games for which there is no comparison model.
Classic ghost games are not so rare in European football, they are mostly the result of sports court judgments after rioting and racial scandals. FC Bayern also had a ghost game, in 2014 in Moscow, with CSKA in the Champions League. Despite the sanctions, around a thousand fans of the Russian team were in the stadium. Bavarian fans also came on their own, rented a floor in a high-rise building next to the arena for a few hours and watched from a distance.
But even this ghost game was still a normal soccer game, with duels without consideration. Free of thoughts that there could be a health hazard other than the torn ligament or the headache. Can you get infected on the pitch?
"Our concept ensures that only healthy people travel to the training camp," says DFL boss Seifert, the administrative professional association responsible for the footballers interpret the risk as "extremely low and not increased compared to other work spheres". However, mutual contagion already occurred in early training, when proximity and duels were still avoided. In fast sports, where deep breathing and a lot of air are emitted, scientists warn that the virus could get directly into the lungs.
In one point, however, modern football is very far: it collects tracking data. Cameras and software record every step on the field. "It was found that the players only kept a distance of less than one and a half meters between the 90 minutes," summarizes Aki Watzke, the managing director of Borussia Dortmund. The Spanish league, which is also working on a concept for resuming the season, would order quarantined opponents who were in direct contact for five minutes if a player became infected.
Football will feel like a laboratory, and the big uncertainty is whether you will love it or just soberly recognize it as a necessity. Ralf Rangnick, soccer director of the Red Bull group operating in Leipzig, speaks pathetically of a "sign for all of humanity", Bayern boss Karl-Heinz Rummenigge expects a "billion-dollar audience" when the Bundesliga starts again. It no longer sounds like the humility with which you had put yourself in the hands of politics a few weeks ago, but like self-exaggeration.
Internationally, the Bundesliga will of course attract attention, the only competition is the leagues of Belarus, Turkmenistan, Estonia, Faroe Islands, South Korea, Taiwan. But the core customers are not unanimously enthusiastic. Three days before the planned start, numerous German fan groups followed a call to suspend gaming throughout Europe as long as games with an audience are not possible. Four fan clubs from the Bayern Südkurve also signed, and one from the third division TSV 1860 Munich. Football can only be itself again when the audience is admitted again. Players will then hear their name and then go into the curve.
And until then? The DFL can only hope that it can handle its remaining program. "Play down", as the Dortmund Watzke, who claims to be a romantic, puts it. And that no health authority intervenes. That no player is harmed by health. "We play under probation and have to prove every matchday that we deserve the next one," says Christian Seifert.
The Bundesliga will be a pure television production for some time. The images that your producer, the DFL subsidiary Sportcast will deliver and which Sky will take over, determine the perception. Henning Wenzel from Sportcast announces that they want to focus on what is happening on the pitch. The (feared) intermediate cuts to the audience are eliminated. “Since no fans can be shown, reactions from players, coaches and substitutes are increasingly being captured. The Slomo packages when scoring a goal have to be adjusted because the cheers of the spectators are eliminated and the time span from scoring to the restart is reduced. "
Sky wants to offer an audio option with a “well-rehearsed public atmosphere”. Comparable to the laughs in American sitcoms. Football becomes unreal.
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