There were a few minutes of what looked like physical hesitation after kickoff – Dortmund and Schalke players standing off each other and allowing the opponent to play passes around with little to no pressure – but that soon melted away and the pressures were coming, the ball was played quicker, and even a few tackles were put in. Yet this was a derby match and felt flat at best. Folks have tried to argue that this is normal, that this is like pre-season football or even pre-pre-season football but that doesn’t seem quite right.
Watching 90 minutes of football between two heated rivals – Borussia Dortmund and Schalke 04 is usually a tasty affair also known as the Revierderby – in the midst of a pandemic and in an empty stadium was.. clinical at best.
The physical ability of the players, their movement, touch, grace, and teamwork is still beautiful – it’s mesmerizing – this is one of the things that drew me to the sport. I adored watching Thierry Henry take on defenders, toying with them like a cat with a mouse.
But without the fans in the stadium you miss the rise in emotion as the ball is played into scoring position; that anticipation that builds in that final challenge between attacking player and his defender; the inhalation of the stadium as the shot comes across the keeper; the frenzy of the celebration when the ball hits the net – fans hugging random fans near them.
What we get instead is an empty stadium, a few people on the sideline screaming, and their voices echoing in the cavern. The stadium itself is magnificent. The seats are all perfect, no paint wearing off, every chair painted the correct color. Even the standing section – which is mostly grey – looks freshly painted and cleaned. We see the hallways before the match and they are all ultra-modern, clean, wide paths, stairs leading down with polished metal handrails. And the pitch is a perfect emerald green. You can see why fans love this place, it’s a black and yellow temple, purpose-built for them and their worship.
But the game on the field is sterile. The advertisements rotate on time – entreating us to buy sump pumps and even an “antivirus” for our computer at one point – but there is a huge part of the game missing. If the stadium is cavernous, it’s Plato’s cave, and we the viewers see both the shadows on the wall and the reality that supports them.
When the first goal comes all we get is the goal; an empty clink of the chains as the net is rattled. Haaland spins off to celebrate, waving his finger at the empty seats. He stops at the corner flag, turns his back, and his teammates stop six feet away from him. That last bit all part of the new regulations: players can spit on the pitch, they can tackle each other, they can even fight for position on corners, but they can’t shake hands or hug each other on goal celebrations. A purely symbolic gesture, a reminder that football may still be happening but we all need to maintain our social distancing.
This is football in a petri dish and we are the clinicians looking down on it. It’s clinical, sterile, stripped of enjoyment and played solely to fulfill a contract. The clubs need the broadcast money. If they didn’t need the money, this wouldn’t be happening. There was an excitement from the idea of football returning after so many weeks away but Dortmund scores 4 goals in this match and after each one the magic wears off a little more.
The 4th goal was an incredible piece of technical play between Haaland and Guerreiro. Guerreiro makes a fantastic run across the defensive line – staying onside – and Haaland plays a through-ball. Guerreiro is a lefty and his body position is all wrong, facing the touch-line instead of the goal and with no time to turn and compose himself. Instead he pokes home the goal with the outside of his left foot. A world-class goal in almost any other setting.
What’s missing is the moment where all the fan noise would have stopped there. In that second when Haaland played him the ball, the entire stadium would have normally inhaled, paused. But there was nothing. Just a shot, a goal, and then the player walked off to celebrate with his teammates… Maintaining social distancing the whole time.
Some folks have suggested that the clubs could add in artificial fan noise which is even more horrific. Either it would just be white noise constantly for 90 minutes or they would get all of those little moments wrong. No one could possibly be fast enough on the button to put the correct noise to the correct action. Though I suppose they could do it on a tape delay. Which in itself raises the question of why we are even watching these matches live at all?
Adding in a canned studio audience would be like adding a laugh track to the stock market ticker-tape on Times Square. Imagine the oohs and aahs of Microsoft’s stock going up a dollar or a smattering of polite applause as Amazon forces workers to die in order to ship people some superfluous product. That’s what we are watching here: this isn’t really football, we are watching corporations fulfill their contracts. We could have almost as much fun watching Amazon employees load pallets or follow an order from start to finish. That could even be turned into a contest: which fulfillment center is best!
I sound stupid reminding people but we are in a pandemic. Hundreds of thousands of people are dying while millions more have lost their jobs. We are facing an absolutely grim future with global climate collapse and pandemic viruses the new normal. And capitalism seems to offer no solutions apart from “you need to get back to work, pretend nothing is happening, risk your life and the lives of people you love or go starve under a bridge somewhere.”
The sight of multi-millionaire footballers playing a game in an empty stadium and with the bare minimum effort wasn’t exactly enjoyable. Instead it threw capitalism’s Hobson’s choice into stark relief.
Damn that was emotive. It feels like this should be the time when capitalism dies, when we look at what we are facing and try another way. I just feel like that’s not going to happen, that every solution people dream up is within the framework of capitalism but the framework itself is broken. Too many decision makers have too much to lose and even in the face of doubling the yearly death rate brush it off as nothing. What chance do we have of solving climate change with its gradual, incremental destruction of lives if coronavirus’ rapid, undeniable, in your face death toll is being dismissed.
I know all the facts about the situation the world is in but man, I’m glad that football is back.
Yes, its not perfect but its football and I enjoyed it. Admittedly it was weird but kinda back to youth football when there was no audience and you played for fun .
You sum up well the experience of watching that match. A display of technical skills almost bereft of the emotion usually associated with the modern game. Truly a clinical experience. The lack of atmosphere reminded me of watching school matches where if you like, an observer sees the game in its purest form. It demonstrates how much the modern professional game is marketed on the emotion and drama rather than the sport itself.