Tuesday, November 30th, 2021
Starting this weekend
Ghost games for the entire Bundesliga
That the ghost games will be reintroduced across Germany is already an open secret in the morning. The federal-state consultations have now come to the conclusion that football in front of fans cannot continue for the time being. A decision is to be made this week.
In the Bundesliga stadiums it will probably be eerily quiet again from the weekend. The return of the ghost games in professional football was obviously a done deal even before the federal-state consultations on the corona pandemic – now the politicians have come to the conclusion that ghost games should take place nationwide again. “One can assume that the Bundesliga should continue to play without spectators. That is the right decision,” said Saxony’s CDU Prime Minister Michael Kretschmer afterwards. A final decision is to be made on Thursday at a short-term conference of the prime ministers.
There are still “different approaches”, reported Bavaria’s CSU Prime Minister Markus Söder, but everyone agreed that “something has to happen in football”. Söder spoke out in favor of “getting along in the professional leagues without spectators until the end of the year”. If there is no agreement on a uniform nationwide regulation, one would “go it alone in Bavaria”. In Saxony, the match between RB Leipzig and Bayer Leverkusen (1: 3) took place last Sunday without spectators. Baden-Württemberg has also spoken out in favor of ghost games.
Söder justified the step by saying “that the high mobility on arrival and departure is currently not responsible”. Football has “a great role model function”. Therefore one has to “reduce contacts everywhere”. Since Bavaria is struggling with numerous infection hotspots, the number of visitors allowed in the stadiums had recently been greatly reduced.
“That should have been stopped”
The outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel and her designated successor Olaf Scholz discussed the coronavirus situation with the heads of government of the federal states for three and a half hours from Tuesday lunchtime. The calls for tightening the protective measures and restrictions had become louder in the past few days. The reason for this is the high number of infections and the spread of the new Omikron variant.
That the ghost games or at least strong spectator restrictions will be reintroduced was an open secret that morning. In addition to soccer, other sports are also affected. Finally, it was about the topic of the major events in its entirety.
“We have to cut back on leisure activities significantly,” said the CDU Chancellery Minister, Helge Braun, in the ZDF morning magazine: “The fact that there were big Bundesliga games with tens of thousands of visitors last weekend is no longer justifiable in view of the dramatic situation in the country.” Greens boss Robert Habeck expressed himself in a similar way. “The Bundesliga doesn’t have to play in full stadiums. That is already possible and could have been forbidden last weekend,” said Habeck: “It was a mistake that the Bundesliga played in full stadiums on the last match day. That is absolutely clear, that should have been prevented. “