These games should not have been played but how we miss their like now they’re wiped out
YOU never miss the water till the well’s run dry.
And my God we could all be doing with a drink to slake a thirst that’s been growing since the final whistle blew on Rangers’ clash with Bayer Leverkusen on March 12.
That match should have never been played. Nor should Liverpool have hosted Atletico Madrid 24 hours earlier. Between them, they attracted a combined audience of 102,000 at a time when it was blindingly obvious this invisible virus was contagious and going to have catastrophic consequences.
In Liverpool, the spike in deaths has been linked with a timescale that suggests there is a correlation with that match being played at Anfield and with the city hosting more than 3000 fans from Madrid at a time when the Spanish capital had virtually ground to a halt.
Of the 1646 cases confirmed in Spain at the time, 782 of them were in Madrid and yet their fans were able to travel to Liverpool and do what supporters do – visit pubs, restaurants, gather in town squares and mingle with the locals.
The game should never have been played and neither should the match at Ibrox, where more than 1000 German supporters arrived from the worst-affected region in their country.
But they were played out and are the last professional matches to be held in Britain. Behind them clubs are feverishly trying to work out how they’re survive with no income streams for the foreseeable future.
The rest of us are looking on from the outside and missing the game we love like crazy after only three weeks.
There was a danger not so long ago we were all guilty of taking football for granted. Saturation coverage on TV where you could watch a different live game every night played it’s part without doubt.
But even for a football nut like me there can be too much of a good thing and it was getting that way.
Can you imagine what the first Saturday will be like when football is given the green light to go again?
I can. It’s going to be like all the first days of the season we’ve ever had rolled into one. And just about every ground in the country will be bursting at the seams.
The excitement will have built over the course of a couple of weeks because the beaks will have to announce a new start date and players will need a pre-season of sorts to get back up to speed.
But as that first matchday approaches, we’re all going to feel the way we did when we were kids waiting for the new season.
It’s a feeling that has long been lost as we’ve taken the game for granted, thinking it will always be there. And it’s not just at the top level either. My two kids play and right now they feel as if their legs have been cut off.
Yes, they’ve been given training programmes but nothing beats getting together with their pals for those three coaching sessions a week and then the games, one on a Saturday, the other on a Sunday.
But when they go back, their enthusiasm for the game will go through the roof and in years to come we’ll all look back on these lost months as a time when we rediscovered our love for a game that we always thought would be there for us.
Until it wasn’t.
SPORTS VIEW SATURDAY