Flat beer is better than no beer but the ‘new-look’football is eerie
On first sampling, football fans are going to find the “new normal” a bit like getting lumbered with a flat pint in a German beer hall.
The taste is fine. But the lack of froth and fizz is disturbing enough to make you wonder whether to persevere, or pack it in until a better – preferably non-social-distanced – offering comes along.
Without doubt, the return of Bundesliga action at a time when fans of all persuasions, across all nations, have been starved of live action is a boon for broadcasters, BT Sport.
Put to one side the absence of handshakes, hugs, team photos, mascots, cheering, or chanting, and yesterday’s meeting of Borussia Dortmund and Schalke 04 was competitive football at a very high level.
The hosts went into yesterday’s Ruhr derby against their neighbours from just 17 miles down the road chasing their first title since the Jurgen Klopp era.
Through a swaggering 4-0 victory, they both cut the gap on leaders Bayern Munich – who play at Union Berlin tonight – to a single point, and advertised why they are as seen as having decent prospects of topping the pile.
Gio Reyna, the highly- rated teenage son of former Rangers midfielder, Claudio, missed his first start when suffering a late injury, but Borussia did not need him.
Erling Braut Haaland (who else?) got things underway with the first goal, not just of the game but also of the entire top-flight card, for his 10th strike in nine games.
Scotland can only hope the young Norwegian loses form or fitness by the time the Nations League playoffs come around.
The Portuguese Raphael Guerreiro added a couple and it was all over bar the shouting – except, of course, there was none. Which was the problem.
Dortmund’s Westfalenstadion is one of Europe’s most-atmospheric grounds, and it averages an amazing 80,000 fans per game.
Those, of course, are pre-covid-19 numbers.
Here there were just 213 including players – all of whom had tested negative for the virus – rattling
around and, for all the commentators’ enthusiasm, this renewal of the “rumble in the Ruhr” was eerily quiet.
Concentrate hard enough, and you could make out the clicking of the photographers’ cameras at set-pieces.
And the sight of substitutes and coaches sitting at metres distance from each other wearing facemasks was a sharp reminder of the new reality.
Not that the new Ger man experience is completely without colour.
In an inspired move, fans of Borussia Monchengladbach ordered more than 12,000 cut- outs of themselves, at some £17 each, to help fill their home ground when they host Bayer Leverkusen on Saturday.
All proceeds go to local charities.
There is unexpected humour, too, in the enforcement of the strict regulations, with Ausburg’s new coach, Heiko Herrlich, getting a red face in addition to the tube of toothpaste when nipping out to the shops.
His breach of the rules earned him a ban from the dugout for the game against wolfsburg.
So in the end, after an absence of two months, flat beer was better than no beer at all.
Whether it will still feel the same once the novelty has worn off is another question.
■ OTHER BUNDESLIGA RESULTS
Augsburg 1, Wolfsburg 2; Fortuna Dusseldorf 0, SC Paderborn 0; Hoffenheim 0, Hertha Berlin 3; RB Leipzig 1, Freiburg 1; Eintracht Frankfurt 1, Borussia Moenchengladbach 3.