Neil Humphreys: Stop whining about empty stadiums
Germans prove that quiet football is better than no football
Watching a football match played behind closed doors is not ideal, but it's hardly a sacrifice.
Taking temperatures outside a polyclinic, a thousand times a day. That's a sacrifice. Being an essential, frontline worker in any industry is a sacrifice.
A nurse tending to the elderly, a migrant worker in enforced isolation, a food courier, a postman, a fruit picker and a shelf stacker are all dealing with hardships beyond Borussia Dortmund celebrating goals in relative silence.
So let's stop whining about empty stadiums. Perhaps save the outrage for a consequence of Covid-19 that actually matters.
After the Bundesliga season resumed at the weekend, broken records play on loop as pundits line up to inform us that the football was not as good.
Something was missing.
Well, yes, there were 80,000 spectators missing at Dortmund's Signal Iduna Park. The club's supporters put social and moral responsibilities before blinkered fandom and stayed away from the stadium - as expected.
And yet, the media landscape is now awash with solemn commentaries, reminding only lobotomised fans that football is just not the same.
If these levels of analysis are maintained, what other pearls of wisdom may be regurgitated in the coming days? The malls are not the same without shoppers? Changi Airport seems different without travellers? The world feels a bit off its axis during the most infectious pandemic since the Spanish Flu?
At the risk of sounding immodest in the face of such profound insight, we know.
We all know.
We know that a game behind closed doors is a pale imitation of the genuine article. It's an elevated training session with more ball boys; an improvised attempt to maintain TV cash flow and stave off a financial crisis.
But the outstanding Erling Haaland led Dortmund to a 4-0 win against Schalke and provided a mostly entertaining - and always fascinating - distraction.
If the K-League, the Bundesliga and eventually the English Premier League cannot offer a pure football experience at the moment, then they can provide escapism from the omnipresent gloom of death tolls and apocalyptic economic predictions.
IN LIMBO
Frankly, many of us have no idea where we will be a year from now, professionally, financially or even mentally, so forgive us a bit of daydreaming for an hour and a half and spare us the sanctimonious bleating about inauthentic sporting experiences.
Google my name and "behind closed doors", if you must, and you'll find the kind of idealistic denunciation of empty stadia that was commonplace back in March.
But that was thousands of deaths ago.
Perspectives change. Covid-19's devastating impact is forcing all of us to realign our hopes and expectations on a daily basis.
Football had to stop when it did. But the game must resume at some point, in whatever guise makes it safe to do so. The comforting effect of something familiar returning at a time of such horrifying change should not be underestimated.
Dortmund coach Lucien Favre was right to call the contest "very strange", but he was arguably wrong to assume that "nothing happens" after a shot, pass or goal.
He was thinking only of his stadium. Plenty happened elsewhere.
Sky Deutschland's coverage attracted over six million viewers in Germany, which was the highest ever. Across the world, fans savoured a rare, shared experience during a global lockdown, including a close relative who struggles with autoimmune disease.
The thought of infection never leaves him. Covid-19 would kill him.
But for 90 minutes, he forgot the virus. He got lost in Haaland's exhibition, watching the first full Bundesliga match of his life.
The eerie silence inside Dortmund's stadium was less important than the sound of half-fit footballers knocking a ball around again.
For now, the game itself has to be enough, as it always was.
On June 8, 1940, more than 42,000 supporters put aside their fears of another Luftwaffe bombing raid and headed to Wembley to watch the War Cup Final, where a half-fit West Ham defeated a half-fit Blackburn.
The game continued, as it did throughout World War II. The fans did not risk spreading infection back then, but they did not have television either.
Circumstances change, but the desire to connect fans with football remains.
Supporters cannot fill stadiums for the foreseeable future so stadiums must fill TV screens instead. It's not the next best thing. It's the only thing available.
As long as everyone involved stays safe, we make do with what we have.
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