The board of the Bavarian Football Association (BFV) made a unanimous decision late Wednesday evening, which was officially announced today at noon. The 2019/20 season will not be canceled, but will be extended beyond June 30th. Game operations will be interrupted until at least August 31 due to the currently applicable Corona protective measures, after which – if possible – the remaining match days of the 2019/20 season will be made up from the beginning of September. The start of the 2020/21 season – if it can be held – would then only start in the spring of 2021 with a greatly shortened season and lower team strengths per league. The BFV’s decision applies to all women’s football and men’s leagues up to and including the Bayernliga. The Regionalliga Bayern, as well as the youth game company will take their own decisions. However, the break in game play applies until at least August 31.
So now the decision has been made. And it is not surprising. In a survey, the BFV asked its member clubs to take a position on whether to join the BFV model to continue the 2019/20 season from September 1st at the earliest and bring it to a fair sporting end. The top of the association said, as it were, that they favor this variant very clearly and that they see no “real” alternative to this model. Other associations had a much more open discussion with their clubs and clearly different results from their opinion polls. In the regional football association of Westphalia, for example, four different options were opened to the clubs. More than 88 (!) Percent spoke in favor of options that consider it most sensible to stop playing. Corresponding plans are now moving towards demolition in Westphalia. There should be no sporty relegation. The champions are determined according to a “quotient rule” (points / games completed) analogous to the decisions of the Handball Bundesliga.
While the Regional Association of Saxony, amateur football in Luxembourg and Switzerland, and the Regionalliga West are also pleading for an end to the season according to the respective votes of their clubs, the regional associations of the Southwest (SWFV), Middle Rhine, Hesse and Lower Saxony advocate the “Bavarian approach” a season extension from September (all information is available here in the LIVE blog). You can expect nothing less than a patchwork of different models in German amateur football. This creates new problems when changing clubs – including cross-association clubs in border areas – and what concerns the participation in the DFB Cup. Because in the Bavarian Totopokal – for example – the quarterfinals have only been completed so far. The first DFB Cup main round is planned for mid-August, but under these circumstances it will probably not start until October at the earliest. If, due to health reasons, it is still not possible to play again on September 1st, it may not be until spring 2021.
Decision at the expense of the 2020/21 season. Bardorf sees problems “passed on to clubs.”
The season in Bavaria is now to be continued from September to November and ended fairly. This poses problems especially for the higher-class clubs when it comes to valid sponsorship and employment contracts. Numerous unanswered questions that Bayern league team TSV Großbardorf now sees “passed on to clubs”. A season 2020/21 will only start in spring 2021 in the model decided by the BFV and will have to be carried out in four months with inevitably significantly reduced team strengths per league. And: in the “worst case”, the 2020/21 season would have to be completely eliminated. This is when the game cannot start again on September 1st due to the corona pandemic and the political decisions that will then apply. Then the remaining match days of the 2019/20 season would have to be moved to spring 2021. A 2020/21 season would then be obsolete, and the 2019/20 season would be followed by the 2021/22 season. Mind games that will keep all friends of amateur football and above all the actors in the more than 4,300 amateur clubs participating in the game busy for several months …
“There are many questions to be clarified, our goal is to get results as quickly as possible. We want and will provide answers. But we will have to process everything neatly and we will not have any what-if discussions in public. It is also clear that thoroughness comes before speed “, explains BFV Managing Director Jürgen Igelspacher, who announces five so-called “solution working groups” for the different subject areas, who deal with the subject areas of “club change”, “adult play business”, “junior play business”, “reports and deadlines” and “embedding in regulations”. “Nevertheless, we want to deliver as quickly as possible, because the questions are pressing. Everyone wants to know what they are at. And we want our answers to convince as many of those who have now voted” No “. Even if we know that not everyone will cheer in the end. “
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