Two words have been strained on this first day of the new Bundesliga season: finally and goose bumps. “Finally” was heard at all locations, not because things started again, but because after almost one and a half years of the Covid pandemic, the real football atmosphere had returned to the stadiums. Players like Dortmund's Marco Reus or Jonas Hofmann from Mönchengladbach had the "goose bumps" triggered, the return of the audience and the resuscitation of long-mothballed rituals are perceived as great luck. At least from those who wanted and were allowed to come. Visiting a stadium filled with thousands of people remains an experience for which there is no comparable substitute.

The feeling of being part of a crowd of singing people who not only comment on the sporting happening on the lawn, but can also influence it, is uplifting.

And when your own team also wins, a magic arises that makes many people very happy.

“Mega, mega mega”, said Stuttgart double goal scorer Marc-Oliver Kempf after the 5: 1 against Greuther Fürth, “today you noticed what it is when there are spectators in the stadium again.

It's a completely different kind of football that you experience. ”And Reus explained:“ There were only 25,000, but it felt like more. ”The longing for a final return to the pre-pandemic conditions is enormous.

Restrict or radically open?

In the stadium at the Alte Försterei, the home of Union Berlin, there was a banner with a clear demand: "No more restrictions - full stadiums, full life." At the same time, however, Germany is struggling with rapidly increasing incidence values, which will soon lead to new restrictions could lead. The Bundesliga season opened on Friday in Mönchengladbach, a city whose incidence on that day was 84.7. Hertha BSC played on Sunday in Cologne with a value of 75.1, tendency: rapidly increasing.

The images of the partying masses, which are supposed to be placed in a checkerboard pattern, but bawling and hugging each other, can be frightening.

And it is currently completely unclear which rules will apply in the medium term.

Because there are arguments for renewed restrictions as well as for a radical opening strategy.

It may not be long before the first intensive care units are full, the sentence “Prohibitions can save lives” remains correct.

On the other hand, Fredi Bobic says in Bild am Sonntag that "in the long run it will be difficult to deny those who have been vaccinated and recovered their rights".

The sports director of Hertha BSC thinks it is "bizarre that the incidence values ​​in our neighboring countries are sometimes much higher and yet relaxations take effect, some of which we can only dream of".

A main argument for such a strategy: the virus is there, societies have to live with the disease and can protect themselves with a vaccine. There will be no better measures in the foreseeable future. If we don't open now, when will we? Especially since openings for vaccinated people can help to increase the willingness to vaccinate. With this in mind, after the 1st FC Cologne, more and more clubs are starting to allow only those who have been vaccinated and recovered in their stadiums in order to further reduce the risk of infections during the games.

The announcement by government officials that they will no longer impose a "hard lockdown" gives professional football hope. That does not mean, however, that the attendance of large events for vaccinated and convalescent remains allowed. It is conceivable that the responsible politicians, as they have often done in the course of the previous pandemic, will choose more cautious strategies in order to keep areas of life open that are more important for people than visiting a football stadium: schools, mass sports, gastronomy, meeting with family and Friends. So the audience may soon disappear from the stadiums, which would be a hard blow for the clubs. Not least in competition with competitors from countries in which the freedoms are greater.