Dhe pandemic is nerve-wracking, of course and especially when it comes to football. Some were badly hit by the fact that everything didn’t go on by itself, that the public’s favor crumbled, that the weaknesses in the system became visible – but not around the national team, because their problems could no longer be hidden from anyone.
One or the other protagonist has become a little thin-skinned because of the tense general situation and tends to overreact – for example Bayern boss Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, when a few smaller clubs actually not only developed their own ideas for television marketing, but also expressed them publicly. Rummenigge wiped them off, and no one had told the Munich-based CEO that behavior like this no longer fits in with the times – and currently not at all.
Rummenigge’s Dortmund colleague Hans-Joachim Watzke did not always look confident in the past few months. Sometimes his statements did not quite fit the general humility that Christian Seifert, the managing director of the German Football League, had issued in order not to endanger the game operations and thus the survival of the Bundesliga. Watzke’s last attack against Mehmet Scholl, who had criticized the current Dortmund interim trainer Edin Terzic, now proved that this year has left its mark everywhere. That could have been shrugged off as a tabloid headline with the wonderful bon mot: “I won’t even ignore that.” Watzke didn’t, couldn’t, or didn’t want to – and so gave the story more meaning than was necessary.
It’s time everyone got down a bit – as far as that’s possible this season. Hardly interrupted because of Christmas, it goes on in the new year immediately, but this time everyone would need a longer break. And as always, there is a latent danger that you will not get rid of the ghosts you have called. Football in particular often draws astonishing conclusions from fundamental problems.
The hint that the Champions League started too late for younger school children was heard – but only for marketing reasons we now have two early games, the others start at 9 p.m. instead of 8.45 p.m. That was about as logical as the reactions to the stress on the players.
European Championship? Field of participants enlarged. World Championship? Field of participants enlarged. And the European Football Union is responding to the complaints about the increasingly boring group stage of the Champions League in this way. For fear of creating a European super league, after the reform there will be ten group games instead of six. More, more and more, that is what drives the International Football Association, which would like to expand its Club World Cup and is applauded by the clubs (because the price is right). So anyone who thinks a winter break is set in stone could still be surprised.
