FOOTBALL’S BACK! EERIE GO
A quiet, strange, clinical experience in Bundesliga... but watching it felt great
NOT football as we know it Jeff, but Gott im himmel it’s good to see it back.
Football, any football, has been the cry from action-starved fans desperate for a return to some normality since mid-march.
The Bundesliga showed the Premier League the way by becoming the first major European League back in business.
Yet if this is football’s ‘new normal’ until the Covid-19 pandemic is under tight control, fans everywhere will have to reset their expectations.
There were no supporters and no famous Yellow Wall at Dortmund’s Signal Iduna Park for the Revierderby with Schalke. Normally the stadium would be bouncing with passion, hostility and the kind of partizan rivalry that elevates football over most other sports.
But in an empty, echoing arena usually holding 81,000 this was the game’s new face – masked, of course.
There might only have been around 200 people inside the ground as strict protocols were observed. But back in the UK we were avidly watching how it all panned out.
Especially the 20 Premier League clubs going round in circles on Project Restart.
And fair play to the Germans, they gave it a humourous English twist with a nod to old boss Jurgen Klopp by playing You’ll Never Walk Alone on the tannoy before kick off.
As you’d expect with most things German, organisation looked neat and efficient. Substitutes, with five allowed to play, were spaced out on the bench with face masks while team-mates grappled with opponents at close quarters on the pitch. Work that out.
Ball-boys wore gloves, wiped down balls that went dead, there were no mascots and spitting was banned. Conditions for play were scrub-clean
Football might have been dormant for months but some things never change – take the rise and rise of Norwegian striker Erling Haaland.
Dortmund’s January signing scored a hat-trick on his debut after his £20million move from Austrian side RB Salzburg and the teenager hasn’t stopped banging them in since.
The joy of seeing a goal wherever it’s scored is a treat we’ve all missed.
And there were plenty of quality strikes on show from Dortmund. They don’t come much slicker either