Bundesliga and Corona: Ghost games increase worries

The new Omikron variant also hits German football with full force. In the new year, because of the restrictions imposed by the corona pandemic, no viewers will be allowed for the time being. That increases the worries in the 1st and 2nd Bundesliga.

Christian Heidel remembers the holidays a year ago with a rather bad feeling. “Last year it took exactly an hour to get the presents, and then I talked on the phone and discussed again.”

Born in Mainz, he was wrestling with whether he should return to his home club 1. FSV Mainz 05 as director of strategy, sport and communication, and at the same time he tried to win Martin Schmidt as sports director and Bo Svensson as head coach. This year he actually wants to turn off the cell phone. And yet, reflective holidays go differently this time too.

Corona: It’s not the stadium that is the problem

From December 28th, national sporting events will again take place without spectators. No matter whether in the hall or outdoors. Regardless of the vaccination status and also whether the hygiene concepts have worked or not. The fear of the highly contagious omicron variant in politics is enormous; you don’t want to be accused of not acting with foresight.

Because visiting the stadium is less of a problem. That is what the aerosol researcher Gerhard Scheuch, who is often quoted by football, said, although he named the arrival and departure, toilets and boxes as the most dangerous places in the Delta variant. Omikron spreads even faster.

When Heidel was supposed to talk about the consequences that a fifth wave in the new year could trigger in German professional football last Sunday (December 19, 2021), the 58-year-old frowned. A difficult topic. Before he thought about football, the first thing he would think about was people’s health. For example to his parents: “My dad is 89, mom will be 85. The second thing to consider is what that means for the club. If the worst prognoses come true, it will be difficult.”

The schedule hardly has any buffer

Nothing is out of the question: a break in the season like the one at the beginning of the pandemic does not seem completely unimaginable. The problem: All leagues would have immense scheduling problems with a longer break of several weeks. There would still be a bit of a buffer for the national leagues in the summer if UEFA were to sacrifice its four Nations League dates in June, but nothing will work after that because of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.

The next 2022/23 season is hopelessly overloaded, so that the experiment with the desert World Cup can start in just under a year. And even if football often spoke of humility: Neither the national associations, nor UEFA or FIFA were willing to sacrifice any competition. Even the unimportant friendlies of the national teams, Supercups and World Cups were whipped through in order to fulfill the lucrative contracts.

There is a risk of new loss of income

For the Bundesliga clubs, the problem arises that the loss of income due to increased ghost games is actually not priced into the budget. Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, the former CEO of FC Bayern, already suspected on Monday on “Bild-TV”: “It will be a big challenge.”

The industry leader loses four to five million euros in every home game without a spectator. The remaining clubs, which do not have such a generous equity base, are hit harder. Almost wisely foresight, the league representatives had loosened the reins on licensing again at their latest general meeting.

Because ghost games tear a hole in the cash register. But what should other professional sports say, whose revenue structure depends even more on audience income? The 36 professional football clubs only collect every seventh euro from ticket sales on average. This should actually be manageable with appropriate cost-cutting measures.

DFL boss Christian Seifert knows the complex issue

The outgoing DFL managing director, Christian Seifert, knows about the complex issue and the many mines involved in this topic. At his farewell talk last Thursday, the DFL boss recalled that although there was no know-how about the corona situation, “in the end, the issue of how to deal with major events must always be assessed in the context of a country’s overall pandemic strategy. And there.” I have the impression that Germany has lost its clearly leading role at the beginning. ”

Questionable decisions in logistics, management and communication would have led to a lack of understanding among many league representatives – including himself. Not only virologists, but also the opinion of psychologists, sociologists and economists should be heard about the corona consequences. Seifert warned urgently against “treating a country with 80 million people like a virological calculation model.”

Where the Bundesliga pioneered the continuation of game operations in spring 2020, it was the first European top league to reintroduce ghost games in autumn 2021. Many clubs cannot understand that. “We always get the same answer from the health department in Mainz: There are no known cases from the stands on arrival that have led to follow-up,” explains Heidel using the example of the 05er.

The managing directors Frank Briel (TSG Hoffenheim) and Michael Ströll (FC Augsburg) also put forward similar arguments when both argued against the viewer restrictions that have been in force for their clubs since the beginning of December.

BVB boss Hans-Joachim Watzke criticizes symbolism

Mainz was able to compete in front of 10,000 fans. The Rheinhessen are one of the clubs that are urgently promoting the DFL’s urgent recommendation for booster vaccinations in their own club. Players, coaches, supervisors and employees, but also relatives, get the third spade. The association now has a vaccination rate of 100 percent.

At the beginning of the season it was different, but when Corona struck just before the first game of the season and the Mainz team took on a rump squad against RB Leipzig (and won 1-0), it also clicked with the last vaccination skeptics, as Heidel said .

The new chairman of the supervisory board of the German Football League (DFL), Hans-Joachim Watzke, had warned against a symbolic policy on Monday: “As an open-air event with significantly reduced audience capacities, professional football in Germany has a coherent concept.” That may be true, but it does not change the fact that Omikron does not cook extra sausage for professional football: If major events are generally no longer permitted for the time being, the Bundesliga must, for better or worse, follow suit. The fifth wave, which is rolling inexorably towards Germany, seems too big and dangerous.

Source: sportschau.de