Dortmund’s doing of Schalke just feels a tad empty as lack of atmosphere kicks in
It’s said that football without fans is nothing and Germany’s return to action confirmed those fears and sent a shiver down my spine.
A gathering of the entire Holt family for some live match action doesn’t happen very often, if ever at all.
But after being starved of football for weeks on end, the resumption of the Bundesliga on BT Sport was not to be missed.
The truth is it wasn’t great but as my wife Lisa said, something’s better than nothing or BBC screening games from the past.
There was only one match I was going to wat ch and that was Dortmund’s 4- 0 thrashing of Schalke in the derby.
At no point did it live up to its billing but there are mitigating circumstances for that.
I appreciate this is the first one so it ’ s going to take time to adapt.
But where was the drive and the intensity?
It just looked like a bit of a bounce game.
I’m not complaining but I’ve seen more life in a Livingston training session.
We often train on our stadium pitch so we are used to hearing all of the echoes and experiencing that ghostly feel about the surroundings – and Dortmund certainly had that.
What I noticed most was the lack of pressure on the player in possession.
That’s typical of a game played in no atmosphere as players feed off the noise and passion which comes from the stands, it also creates an environment where you automatically work hard and look to impress.
I have played in closed- door games but only in pre- season friendl ies and this f ixture certainly had that feel about it.
Dortmund were excellent technically and Schalke looked like a team with no edge.
What it also highlighted is the value of having all of the external things at football games, fans and everything that goes with creating an atmosphere both home and away.
There is nothing better as a player or coach of winning a gameawayfromhomegameawayfromhome, itmeansitmeans that bit more both for punters who have made the effort to travel and the team.
You saw how that dynamic didn’t exist for Schalke, there was a clear lack of drive and desire to try to achieve a result.
Winning is about yourself, your team-mates and the fans. If you take away the support then you get what was served up at the Signal Iduna Park.
Schalke played with no risk, passion comes from the stands and transfers on to the pitchpitch, that’s why their display was lacking in any of these qualities.
The game just appeared cosmetic, it was artificial by the very nature of the empty stadium and that’s why it came across like a friendly.
I enjoyed watching how the Bundesl iga adapted to the health crisis and what they had in place to get the game on so everyone involved should be applauded for that.
But it all felt and looked a bit comical.comical IknowthatmaysoundIknowthatmaysound strange. I never experienced any buzz from watching it.
The game itself was good but there was no nastiness to it and I just don’t know how you can artificially inject that edge in these fan-free games.
If this is to be Scottish football’s future then we need to look and learn and see how we can do it even better.
As a nation we are going to get our game back up and running behind closed doors so we need to get used to it and find a way to have a bit of an edge. How do we take away the negative side of it such as celebrating goals in front of empty stands?
How do we eliminate that comical side of things?
I don’t want players like we saw with Dortmund having a laugh and a giggle as they kid on they’re celebrating in front of their nonexistent home fans.
There needs to be a serious edge to proceedings.
The Holt family will persevere with it, Scottish football should take a lead from Germany so it’s also hopefully coming to our own screens again soon.
I hope yesterday was just teething problems, if not, we’ll have to pipe in an atmosphere.
The game as a whole just appeared cosmetic, it was artificial by the very nature of the empty stadium