It’s good to be back... even as bio-secure football
IT turns out football without fans is SOMETHING, after all.
A cold compromise, sure. A clinical exercise, maybe. An echoey, eerie event, certainly.
And when you can interrupt viewing by checking on the Covid-19 daily death toll, utterly unimportant, of course.
But it is SOMETHING, a distraction at the very least.
Did this, and the Bundesliga’s return, lift a nation’s spirits? No, probably not even Germany’s. But was it a pleasant alternative to the daily cycle of fear and worry? Emphatically yes.
If you like football and not just the spectacle of professional, big-time football, you enjoyed this match.
You enjoyed Dortmund’s slick, accomplished performance.
You enjoyed watching Erling Haaland remind everyone what all the fuss is about with a fusion of directness and deftness.
You enjoyed the family trait of elusiveness in his Dortmund team-mate Thorgan Hazard, the pace and finishing of Raphael Guerreiro and the creative mind of Julian Brandt. You enjoyed the fallibility of hapless Schalke goalkeeper Markus Schubert, whose rotten distribution led to the Guerreiro goal that doubled Dortmund’s lead after Haaland’s cultured opener. You enjoyed Schubert’s rick because it was a reminder of the familiar that you relished on a daily basis. There was even the odd new thing to enjoy, such as the delicious thud of boot on ball, and the shrill sound of the net and its base being rattled by a successful strike, as produced by Hazard early in the second half to end the game as a contest. Sure, it’s a funny, old game, bio-secure football. But no one tunes in especially to see a pre-match handshake, someone spitting into the turf, listen to the crowd, or even to watch some tangled celebrations, cleverly choreographed or otherwise.
There was a time, believe it or not, when an elbow bump to mark a routine goal would have seemed over the top, when a firm handshake was about as animated as it got.
Even a firm handshake was forbidden here, but it is hard to say the spectacle was any the worse for it. Indeed, if you are into that sort of thing, expect some well rehearsed individual goal dances after Haaland’s initial, basic effort here.
One of the buzzwords ahead of this Bundesliga’s resumption was ‘surreal’.
Yet, a Signal Iduna Park with only
Did the return of the Bundesliga lift a nation’s spirits? No, but it was pleasant alternative to the daily worry
KEEP YOUR DISTANCE Dortmund’s players salute goalscorer Erling Haaland ...from a far
300 people in it was unusual rather than surreal. The peripheral elements were, occasionally, a distraction.
Players arrived with masks to complement their Louis Vuitton washbags and the substitutes – sat at social distances – kept their mouths covered while watching on.
But the intrigue was in gauging how the players would respond to the occasion. It was in a positive fashion, it has to be said.
There was no shortage of physical contact, with Hazard amongst those actually seeking it out for free-kick-winning purposes – just like in the good, old days.
One thing that did seem to be diluted from the good, old days was dissent.
Not that I’m an expert on the language of German dissent, but referee Deniz Aytekin appeared to have as comfortable an afternoon as
an official in a medically sealed stadium can have. Was that because there was a slight drop in the level of passion and emotion from the participants? Quite possibly.
Again, that’s a compromise we will have to accept, just as we will have to accept the quiet, elbow-bump acclaim for Guerreiro’s sumptuous outside-of-the-boot finish for his second and Dortmund’s fourth.
It is not elite, marquee football as we have known it for all of our lives, but we have never known anything like our lives right now.
Top-level football is back in Germany and will be back here in a month’s time.
It is not the same as in a time that becomes more hazily distant hour by anxious hour, but it is back and nice to watch. Football without fans is SOMETHING, after all.