Frankfurt / Main (dpa) – Now it’s true! Just under ten weeks after the first Corona stop, the Bundesliga is making the leap back into everyday life with a modified set of rules – and when restarting it is the first major international sports league to be under maximum observation.
The cabin video by Herthas Salomon Kalou and a flippant shopping tale by Augsburg trainer Heiko Herrlich offered a foretaste of the height of the fall before the resumption “Absolute emergency operation”, says DFL boss Christian Seifert, in acute danger.
From this Saturday on, from the point of view of the German Football League, everything will revolve around football, but it’s not that easy. The restart with ghost games, which was approved under strict conditions, becomes a stress test for the whole league, because the focus of the games at 3:30 p.m. is on the active players. Do the substitutes wear the face mask? Does everyone use their own water bottle? Do you keep your distance on the bench and when celebrating goals? Questions that sounded like satire months ago are now decisive for the success of a painstakingly elaborated concept by the DFL task force.
This also creates a special situation for those responsible. «I’ve almost never been so tense. We do not know where we stand in sports. Of course, I wonder whether everything that we have prepared in organizational terms will work, ”said Borussia Dortmund’s managing director Hans-Joachim Watzke of the“ Funke Mediengruppe ”. Bayern coach Hansi Flick emphasized: “The whole world looks at Germany how we do it.” The coach emphasized that this could have a signal effect on “all leagues”.
One point of the DFL concept was apparently cashed in shortly before the start of the game on Friday. According to «Bild-Zeitung», the trainers do not have to wear a mouthguard, but only keep the minimum distance of 1.5 meters. DFL director Ansgar Schwenken said: “For the coaches, sufficient distance maintenance is guaranteed if they move away from the other people at a distance of at least 1.5 meters.”
In view of the many unanswered questions, it is completely open whether the season can be ended by June 30. Even the quick approval of the federal and state governments is a partial success for the industry, which should now be built on. Bremen’s senator Ulrich Mäurer (SPD), who is critical of the restart, already indicated in a “Spiegel” interview that the entire Bremen team would be quarantined if a professional became infected with the corona virus.
A Werder player is in a two-week domestic quarantine because a person from his immediate environment has previously tested positive for the corona virus. The Bremen announced this on Friday afternoon. However, the entire Werder team can continue training and compete against Bayer Leverkusen in the Bundesliga on Monday evening, since the player himself has been tested twice since then, according to the club.
While individual games in the 2nd Bundesliga were rescheduled due to a team quarantine from Dynamo Dresden, the Oberhaus is scheduled to start with all nine games of match day 26. However, it is still unclear whether the Monday game between Bremen and Leverkusen can be seen on TV. The background to the problem is a dispute over the TV contract between the Eurosport / Discovery group and the DFL.
In order to at least reduce the likelihood of infection of players to a minimum, the federal and state governments ordered clubs to go to a quarantine-like training camp before the restart. This should take seven days. But there were also difficulties with this: While Gladbach only moved into his hotel on Monday and thus clearly shortly before the first game in Frankfurt on Saturday (6.30 p.m.), Augsburg’s new coach Herrlich did not take the arrangement so exactly. To get skin cream and toothpaste, the former professional went to the supermarket, as he frankly told a press round on Thursday.
What the former professional initially described as a Schmonzette now quickly has consequences. After growing criticism, the misconduct was admitted wonderfully in the evening and prescribed a mandatory break for training on Friday and the game against VfL Wolfsburg on Saturday. So his debut is postponed for a week. «I made a mistake by leaving the hotel. Even if I have followed all hygiene measures both when leaving the hotel and otherwise, I cannot undo this, »said Herrlich.
1. FC Union Berlin also has to play against Bayern Munich without its coach. Urs Fischer returns to Berlin from Switzerland after the death of his father-in-law on Saturday, but will only look after the team again after two negative coronavirus tests. The Bundesliga team announced on Friday.
Sporting issues such as the open championship fight or the upcoming district derby remained marginal aspects even in the week of the restart. When it came to relegation, there was less discussion about the quality of Bremen or Paderborn than about possible valuation questions, if the current crisis still has to be stopped. The DFL has initially postponed this sensitive issue and is going into its laboratory experiment without a demolition solution, which is intended to isolate those involved in the billion-dollar business as well as possible from the society that has recently opened up more and more for several weeks.
The big goal of the professional clubs is: play ready – somehow! The TV million not only depends on the existence of some clubs, but also on the continued existence of the Bundesliga in its current form, according to DFL boss Seifert. With the hygiene concept, the DFL has convinced the politicians of a quick restart, but there are still doubts among football fans like the Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder (“A weekend with football is much more bearable than a weekend without football”).
In any case, football does not have wide acceptance among the population for its pilot project. The majority of Germans are against a continuation at the present time. According to this, 56 percent of those questioned criticize the season restart next weekend, as can be seen from the “Germany trend” in ARD’s “Morgenmagazin”. 31 percent of those questioned are in favor of the continuation. In view of the current circumstances, numerous fan groups are against a new start with ghost games.
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