Promotion, relegation, farewell: Whitsun, for the finals of the Bundesliga and the 2nd league, there was a lot to do for fans of football, even if only a few could enter the stadium.

SV Werder goes under, Robert Lewandowski scores his 41st goal of the season, Bochum and Greuther Fürth rise, the Iron from Berlin go on a European tour.

But there was not only that to be seen on football television, on which the fans in the pandemic were thrown back.

There were farewell scenes that point beyond the day and the sport.

Who was not dismissed with honor?

Hansi Flick, Hermann Gerland, David Alaba, Jérôme Boateng and Javi Martínez at Bayern.

Sami Khedira in Berlin.

Łukasz Piszczek in Dortmund.

There, the teams also stood in line for the highly esteemed referee Manuel Gräfe.

Peace, fair play, tears of joy.

Football could seem like a counter-world for the moment, despite commerce and power struggles (at the DFB).

However, the violent riots in Cologne immediately reminded us that this is not the case.

We do not want to see such pictures, said the reporters and experts at Sky.

And yet we saw them.

A perfect final word

In Dortmund's Westfalenstadion, the Bender twins played for the last time in the game against Bayer 04 Leverkusen, and they were ready to be scripted. In the last few minutes Lars was substituted for his brother Sven. As soon as he was on the field, he was allowed to take a penalty. The Dortmund goalkeeper Roman Bürki made no move to chase the ball after the score was three to zero for his team. That was pretty casual.

The true Pentecost message of the day of the match - so that the Holy Spirit come upon us and all understand each other - then had the two benders. There they stood, in the pouring rain, in front of the microphone and when the reporter Ulli Potofski asked what it was like, now that their career was coming to an end, they didn't really know what to say. They didn't want to remember the one big moment (which one?), But the whole thing, family and friends and teammates; not to any result, but to the real thing.

And then Lars Bender came up with a final word for that, to which nothing needs to be added. “A soccer team,” he said, “is a symbol of what society should look like: standing together, one person standing up for the other, having a common goal. It doesn't matter who is sitting next to you, what they look like, where they come from, what religion they have, what views or what culture they come from. Standing together and not allowing yourself to be divided, that is the message I want to put out. This is what I take away from my career. That's the most important thing. ”Not only was the reporter flat, in the TV studio they were too. And it couldn't be any different in front of the screen. The country needs guys like the Benders, and not just on the soccer field.