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Professional football versus politics (nd current)

In football stadiums, like here on Sunday in Mainz, there is only a gap between the team and the fans.

Photo: imago images / Jörg Niebergall

Professional football these days inevitably provides a lot of images that do not match the increasing demands to reduce the number of contacts again. When FSV Mainz and 1. FC Köln ended the twelfth matchday in the Bundesliga with a 1-1 draw on Sunday evening, a special contrast program emerged. The block with the Mainz Ultras among the 25,500 spectators, for example, had deliberately not renounced to sing to the best of their ability. Close together. Without mask. During the half-time break, a group of former Mainz footballers gathered on the lawn, who survived a crazy relegation battle under the late coaching visionary Wolfgang Frank in the second Bundesliga a quarter of a century ago. Everyone hugged each other for a souvenir photo. Fears of contact were not to be observed on either coach’s benches when there was a violent argument with open mouths. Here the Mainz soccer teacher Bo Svensson, who complains about a personal insult, and his assistant Babak Keyhanfar, there the nagging Cologne assistant coach Kevin McKenna.

In view of the current corona situation, none of this looked particularly exemplary. Nevertheless, the Mainz sports director Christian Heidel did not criticize his own camp, but the politics. If a 2G rule for football professionals is put into the foreground immediately after the federal-state consultations, then he already has the impression, “to whitewash other problems, to whitewash what has happened here politically in the last few months: That I don’t like it at all. If we can’t do it the normal way, I wouldn’t have any objection to compulsory vaccination. «The more than 90 percent vaccinated players who, according to the German Football League, are not the problem in this country. That is why the demand is “just populism”.

Final panic German professional football conjures its own end – in order to be able to return to normality faster than others

A lot of anger seemed to have built up with Heidel. His outburst is representative of the displeasure of some league representatives about political omissions. And: The nervousness may also be growing because the fourth wave for professional football will announce the next audience restrictions. The Champions League participant RB Leipzig was the first first division club to be caught, as it has to play ghost games again in the state of Saxony, which has been particularly hard hit by the pandemic, until December 12th. In a statement, the association scolded the country for not implementing “any viable concepts” to contain the pandemic.

Hans-Joachim Watzke, one of the bosses best networked in the highest political levels, symbolically raised the warning finger: The managing director of Borussia Dortmund warned at the general meeting against introducing a nationwide regulation. There should be no collective liability. Because: BVB wants to play the Bundesliga summit against FC Bayern on December 4th in front of a large crowd. The record champions from Munich will probably have to adjust to restrictions again: Prime Minister Markus Söder wants the utilization of stadiums and halls in Bavaria at sporting events to be limited to a maximum of 25 percent by December 15.

But how great is the risk of infection when visiting a stadium? Even experts argue about it. The Frankfurt virologist Martin Stürmer has just reiterated his stance that the 2G rule is not sufficient. “Nevertheless, people are very close together, they cheer, they scream – there is a lot of contact and opportunity to get infected.” To make things safer, he recommends not only additional tests and a mask requirement, but also a reduction in the number of spectators if necessary.

For the biophysicist Gerhard Scheuch, who is regarded as a luminary among aerosol scientists, it makes absolutely no sense to cancel large open-air events. After the start of the pandemic, it was found relatively quickly that “contagion occurs almost exclusively indoors”. There is absolutely no danger to be in a stadium. “I would watch out for such events on arrival and departure, in the toilets and then of course in the boxes. These are the most dangerous places. “He could only repeat what he said last year:” If I were a politician, I would do anything to motivate people to go outdoors. So, out into the fresh air, to Christmas markets, to the stadium, sometimes to the park. “

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