Should the Bundesliga resume in May?

An announcement by Christian Seifert, the CEO of DFL, states that the Bundesliga could possibly reopen by May the 9th. However, with Germany battling over 37,000 active Covid-19 cases, is it the right decision to make?

I believe the main aim of this is to ensure the league is able to ensure the top two leagues of Germany don’t go bankrupt, as may probably happen if no matches take place throughout the year.

This is after Borussia Dortmund chief executive Hans-Joachim Watzke claimed the Bundesliga “will go under” if the season does not resume in the next few months.

By broadcasting matches live, with millions of people staying at home in quarantine, the league will receive lots of revenue from broadcasters and advertisers, as the viewership of matches will skyrocket, with fans of football having nothing else to do.

However, will this feel the same as regular football? Is it a good move?

There is, first of all, the possibility of a player in the league contracting the coronavirus. Although it may be cured, considering the physical strength of these athletes, the main issue with regards to player health is the fact that upon studying subjects in Hong Kong, approximately 30% of virus patients who recovered showed decrease in lung function, meaning the virus may cause irreparable damage to the lungs.

The statistics above prove the point that these footballers very well may recover from the coronavirus, but the extent of damage the virus may have done to their athletic abilities can only be found out once the league resumes.

Another problem is that of fans. Despite fans being barred from stadiums, this does not bar them from gathering outside the stadium, thus destroying the entire point of hosting matches without fans.

It is left to be seen what the true outcome is. Unfortunately, it looks, at the moment at least, as if this is a lose-lose situation. But not all of this is bad.

It is funny that leagues across the globe were caught so blissfully unaware, with absolutely no backup plan. Did they truly learn nothing from the H1N1 pandemic of 2009? The leagues and the clubs themselves have been caught being absolutely unprepared for the onslaught that they were about to face, and the current crisis will ensure they do not face the dilemmas they are facing now in the future.

While reception to the idea of reopening the Bundesliga has faced a lukewarm reception in Germany, the same can clearly not be said about the reopening of the Premier League in the UK.

This, however, is largely due to the scale to which the UK has been affected by the coronavirus. With 130,000 active cases and over 20,000 deaths so far, the UK is in a far worse position than Germany is in, it certainly does not seem as though they will be reopening the Premier League any time soon.

The Netherlands, on the other hand, has sought out a different solution to the problem. With a relatively lower coronavirus case count of over 33,000 active cases, they have simply removed relegation and promotion between the country’s top two leagues.

The outcome of this solution is yet to be seen, but the action Dutch Football executives have taken is far more decisive and drastic than any other league in the world, and they must certainly be commended for that.

Feel free to discuss your own opinions in the comments below!

Related posts:

If you take the place to be running an expert health club or if you are planning on contributing to your house fitness center, you require to seriously consider buying the best sort of commercial…

Commemorating S.V. Raju’s 84th birth anniversary, Centre for Civil Society presents a series of selected essays from our archives, in an effort to reignite the spirit of liberty he so ardently…

AWS lambda is a computing service that runs your back-end code in response to events and automatically manages the computing resources required by that code. AWS lambda is Serverless because you…