Welcome back to our ‘bubble’
It’s back! No, I’m not talking about the Premier Soccer League 2019/20 season, everyone’s known about that for some time now. Where have you been? I’m talking about your favourite soccer supplement, Phakaaathi, free with your copy of today’s Citizen newspaper.
We have had to return in a slightly abbreviated form, with eight pages, four from our partners, Phumulela, and four from our own stable. But back we are, bringing you all the build up as all 32 PSL teams teams prepare to go into the bubble, so to speak and start the Nedbank Cup, the GladAfrica Championship and ultimately the Absa Premiership.
To be honest I didn’t come into the business of football journalism expecting that I would ever have to write the word “bubble” this much, or Covid-19, or coronavirus, or Biologically Safe Environment
(BSE), you get the picture. But this is the new world as we know it, and it’s no different for the beautiful game, if we are to get it up and running again, which is financially necessary, frankly, for all involved.
The risks are there, that we could see an outbreak of the virus in the BSE, which the first teams are set to enter this week in Gauteng. But if the strict regulations in place are stuck to, an outbreak is highly unlikely, in fact only one percent, according to Safa’s Chief Medical Officer Dr Thulani Ngwenya.
The basic principle is that you are tested before you enter the bubble, you are not allowed in if you test positive for Covid-19, and those who test negative cannot leave the bubble for the duration that their team is involved in the 2019/20 season.
If you are caught leaving you simply will not be allowed back in. One concern does have to be exactly how vigilantly all teams and parties involved in the bubble will stick to the rules in place. I mean, Gauteng is a major metropolitan area and policing its people is difficult enough for those paid to do it, never mind the PSL. But one hopes a sense of responsibility for taking the season to its conclusion, with the least fuss possible, to the benefit of all involved. will drive a strict desire to stick to the rules.
And then, hopefully, we can start to primarily discuss the actual football, with the Nedbank Cup semifinals kicking it all off on Saturday. Baroka v Bloemfontein Celtic, followed by Bidvest Wits v Mamelodi Sundowns, should give us an idea of what the game in South Africa is going to look like in these strange, crowdless times. Yes, obviously fans will not be allowed at the matches and it remains to be seen if the broadcasters choose to use super-imposed crowd noises, as we have seen in leagues like the English Premier League. and the German Bundesliga.
I certainly prefer this as a viewing spectacle, as it does add a sense of normality to the abnormality of silent professional football, albeit that it is all created by excellent sound engineers. My one hope is that SuperSport and the SABC do not subject us to a constant, high-pitched vuvuzela drone. In that case I would much prefer silence, thank you very much.
We should quickly get an idea of those who have taken their preparations for the season resumption seriously, and those who perhaps have not. After all, in professional football you can’t afford to lose that competitive edge. I expect that most teams will be on the ball, and raring to go again, after so long on the sidelines. I certainly can’t wait for it to get going again, after months of writing about bubbles and BSEs.