Berlin (dpa) – In the corona pandemic, professional football and its stars remain under the magnifying glass even before the start of the second half of the season – especially after short public holidays by professionals on sunny beaches, including an extension of the quarantine.
In cold Germany, the next tricky phase has long been waiting for everyone in the Bundesliga. The omicron wave is rolling. Around 50 Bundesliga players tested positive over the holidays. There is even the question of a new bubble in order to be able to keep the game going. “It wouldn’t be an alternative for me,” said Borussia Dortmund coach Marco Rose. “It would hurt my heart if we had to go back in times of lockdown – close things again and we were completely cut off from everything.”
It does not look like that for the time being, even if most of the games on this and the coming weekends may take place in front of no or only a few spectators. The question, however, is: What else can football Germany have in store, especially when you look at other top European leagues like the Premier League?
Mirror of society
The many corona cases at FC Bayern, which even questioned the second half of the season opener this Friday, and with other teams could only be the prelude. “The Bundesliga in particular is only a mirror of what is happening in society. The virus is now riding at a gallop through the population,” said virologist Klaus Stöhr to Sky Sport.
“Of course there are young, athletic, highly immune people in the Bundesliga. And then the disease will also be less severe. But you shouldn’t have any illusions here. The infection will not pass anyone by,” said Stöhr.
The fact that Nadiem Amiri from Bayer 04 Leverkusen has now tested positive for Corona also demonstrated “what an enormous challenge the situation is for us and society” for his coach Gerardo Seoane. According to Seoane, Amiri has recovered, vaccinated twice and boosted.
Dynamic corona situation
That is why everyone is preparing with high pressure for the further eventualities in the pandemic, which has now been going on for around two years – as far as this is possible at all. Health economist Florian Kainzinger, who, among other things, advises the professional leagues in football, basketball and ice hockey on the development of their hygiene concepts, did not want to comment on the dpa request. The situation is too dynamic.
One of the main problems is the quarantine for contact persons. After all, team isolations in the Bundesliga remained rather an exception compared to top leagues in other ball sports. Ultimately, the responsible health authorities decide on this.
“You hear it again and again, sometimes the numbers explode and then within a club, all of a sudden twelve new infections, then it is difficult to get a team right,” emphasizes coach Urs Fischer from 1. FC Union Berlin.
Travel as a driver
Just like it was the case with Bayern. The drivers were the holiday trips of the players, who otherwise change clothes in several cubicles in Munich for reasons of hygiene and only get their food “to go”. “There is no option that you are not allowed to go on vacation,” emphasized coach Julian Nagelsmann and also recalled his corona infection: “I was just eating and got infected. That happened.”
Home vacationer Thomas Müller emphasized in “Matchday Winner Winner – The Kickbase Podcast”: “I didn’t stay home now because I wanted to do something much, much better than my colleagues, it was about the fact that it was too exhausting for me.”
Even those in charge of other clubs did not want to raise allegations about the travel activities of the highly paid professionals, on the contrary. “It’s not like you don’t get infected in Germany,” said Domenico Tedesco. The new coach of runner-up RB Leipzig added: “We have players whose families are abroad. It is human to enable the boys to do that.”
Criticism from Eberl
The players are also people who should and should have their freedom, explained Gladbach’s manager Max Eberl and countered: “I don’t want to know how many people traveled over Christmas.” He finds criticism of the travel behavior of the players “at a certain point unbearable”.
Not only Eberl currently sees professional football in the corona pillory from a political perspective. “Many politicians have used football as a scapegoat and thrashed it into the fact that football games take place in front of spectators and said that this was the big thing that drove the pandemic,” said Sig Zelt, spokesman for the ProFans fan association. “We think that’s populist.”
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