Bundesliga set to be the first major championship to resume

Restart German football from May 9 behind closed doors? Professional clubs could give the green light on Thursday and make the Bundesliga the first major championship in Europe to take the plunge despite the uncertainties linked to the coronavirus.

The Bundesliga behind closed doors until 2022 in the worst case scenario? via @ 20minutesSport https://t.co/ep7zcroC8v

The financial stake is colossal: if the championship, interrupted on March 13, is closed on June 30, the payment of television rights of a value estimated at approximately 300 million euros will be released. The decision to compete for the remaining nine days could be made on Thursday during a videoconference meeting between representatives of the 36 clubs from the first and second divisions.

Two of the main leaders of the German Länder, the conservatives Armin Laschet and Markus Söder, partly sold the match Monday evening by giving the date of May 9 for a resumption of the matches without public. "A weekend with football is much more bearable than a weekend without football," said Markus Söder, manager of Bavaria, home to the country's most successful club, Bayern Munich.

Popular rallies banned at least until August 31

"There will be no more spectator games this season," warned Laschet, who heads North Rhine-Westphalia, the state with no less than seven Bundesliga clubs, including Dortmund and Mönchengladbach.

If Germany is less destabilized than some European neighbors by the pandemic, large popular gatherings remain prohibited until at least August 31. But "with caution, closed games are certainly possible again," said Health Minister Jens Spahn on Tuesday. "For millions of football fans, it would be a return to normal from May 9, even if it is in an empty stadium. "

German clubs resume training (with drastic rules) via @ 20minutesSport https://t.co/Y06NGPWC3B

This possible recovery also received a positive reception from the big cars of the championship, from Bayern (1st in the classification before the interruption) to Dortmund via the RB Leipzig. Their players have found their way to training in small groups in recent weeks. "As long as the rules can be followed, the players will play, in quarantine if necessary," joked Bayern star Thomas Müller.

The clubs and the German League are invited to take sanitary measures to avoid any contagion between players or with the tens of people present in the stadium during a meeting behind closed doors. A working group, chaired by the doctor of the German selection Tim Meyer, must make proposals.

20,000 tests

The Federation (DFL) promises in particular that players and members of coaching staff will be tested every three days. She estimates that the number of tests needed to ensure that future meetings are risk-free is 20,000. But even if Germany has superior test capacities than its European neighbors, such use is far from being unanimous, especially in the medical field.

"I think the tests should be used where it makes medical sense," said Lars Schaade, vice president of the Robert Koch Institute, responsible for epidemiological monitoring. "I don't see why certain groups of the population should be subjected to systematic screening," he said.

A takeover would be "an insult to the rest of society"

The Federation emphasizes the need to resume play, even behind closed doors, to touch the windfall of TV rights, a question of survival for many clubs. However, some supporters across the country disapprove of this scenario. The influential association of supporters “Unsere Kurve” (“Our turn”), like groups of ultras, pleads for a definitive end to the season, rather than meetings without an audience.

The group of supporters Fanszenen Deutschlands even sees in a recovery "an insult to the rest of society (…) in particular to the nursing staff". And the police union has worried about the risk of supporters gathering near the stadiums to encourage their teams despite the ban on assembly.

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