Bundesliga is back

[Wookie]

Disclaimer: I'm american and retired my soccer career in 7th grade. Coaching my kids teams got me back interested in the game the past 6-7 years. I've never watched much Bundesliga, but it's all there is now. I watch primarily Premier League and the best matches in The French, Spanish and Italian top leagues.  It just seems the depth is so good in Premier league that I can get reasonably stoked about watching any premier league match. I love watchng Barcelona, Real Madrid, PSG, and The top couple Italians teams.  What's the opinion on German depth and the bundesliga? Germany may arguably be the best national team (I know South Americans might disagree). So why is bundesliga not more compelling to me? Is it just lack of spending time with it? 

[FireDigger]

I agree it's nice to have some form of "elite level" sports competition back even though I don't normally watch Bundesliga. I haven't seen any matches, but did watch some highlights. Those empty seats are really strange huh?

[Nino]

From a German perspective - Bundesliga is nice to have, but it has been too soon to start again as people do not regard it as being really necessary in these times.

According to a recent poll in Germany 56% diapprove of it being back on again.

I watched the matches yesterday at my local cigar lounge and could not feel any passion for so called "ghost matches".

I would love to have the old normal and watch a match in the stadium smoking a cigar & drinking a beer - but that will have to wait.

http://flyingcigar.de/smoking-cigars/201203-goals-steaks-and-cigars-a-perfect-saturday/

[Deeg]

7 hours ago, Wookie said:

Disclaimer: I'm american and retired my soccer career in 7th grade. Coaching my kids teams got me back interested in the game the past 6-7 years. I've never watched much Bundesliga, but it's all there is now. I watch primarily Premier League and the best matches in The French, Spanish and Italian top leagues.  It just seems the depth is so good in Premier league that I can get reasonably stoked about watching any premier league match. I love watchng Barcelona, Real Madrid, PSG, and The top couple Italians teams.  What's the opinion on German depth and the bundesliga? Germany may arguably be the best national team (I know South Americans might disagree). So why is bundesliga not more compelling to me? Is it just lack of spending time with it? 

For me, the level of play in the Bundesliga is probably second only to the EPL in overall quality.  Bayern can go toe to toe with anyone in the world, Dortmund is a legit power and Borussia MG is an exciting outsider.  The difference in depth of talent becomes obvious once you get deeper into the table, though.  That said, the overall style of play in the Bundesliga is generally pretty open and entertaining.  

As for the matches with no fans, it took some getting used to, but for me it's miles better than no football at all.  If it can be sustained without putting players and staff at risk, I'm all in favor of it.  Especially as I don't think we're going to see sporting events with crowds for at least a year and maybe longer in most places.

[armada_crew]

I think I agree, while would love to see the fans back (in a safe manner) for the atmosphere, it is definitely better than no football at all. We are a house full of football fans here in the US and our early Saturday and Sunday mornings haven't quite been the same without some games on.

On a individual level, how on fire in Haaland for Dortmund, another goal, ridiculous, only 19 years old I think.

[Meklown]

10 hours ago, Wookie said:

So why is bundesliga not more compelling to me? Is it just lack of spending time with it? 

99% of the games I watch involve would be the English premier league. There are a few main reasons for this.

1. Accessibility. It is a lot easier to subscribe to and watch the EPL. 

2. Quality. I find that other top European leagues are defined by a distinct gap in quality between their top few teams, and the rest of the league. This is unlike any game in the EPL where anybody can beat anybody. Like for example, QPR went 2-1 up against Man C until .. AGUEROOOOOOOO!!!! Or the unlikeliest of suspects breaking Liverpool's unbeaten run during this season. I think in terms of drama and excitement, nothing beats the EPL. 

3. Tactics. I fall asleep watching Italian and Spanish games. They are so tactical and much slower paced. Bundesliga is arguably the closest to EPL in terms of dynamics and box-to-box action. 

6 hours ago, nino said:

I watched the matches yesterday at my local cigar lounge and could not feel any passion for so called "ghost matches".

I guess the fact is that you tuned in, and so did millions of others. Elite sports do help to provide entertainment and keep people indoors (hopefully not in crowds), and tide over this terrible period. Games and passion will definitely not be the same as before, but anything to help should count as a positive.

[Deeg]

5 hours ago, armada_crew said:

I think I agree, while would love to see the fans back (in a safe manner) for the atmosphere, it is definitely better than no football at all. We are a house full of football fans here in the US and our early Saturday and Sunday mornings haven't quite been the same without some games on.

On a individual level, how on fire in Haaland for Dortmund, another goal, ridiculous, only 19 years old I think.

Haaland is a beast.  Has every club in the bag as a striker, including precociousness.  Not long for Dortmund if financial normalcy ever returns, and one of those guys that's so good he could make Norway a threat in Euros and even WC just on his own.  Could very easily be the best true #9 in the world within 2-3 years.

[Nino]

6 hours ago, armada_crew said:

On a individual level, how on fire in Haaland for Dortmund, another goal, ridiculous, only 19 years old I think.

He was the reason I watched .... ?

[Smokecigareveryday]

15 hours ago, nino said:

From a German perspective - Bundesliga is nice to have, but it has been too soon to start again as people do not regard it as being really necessary in these times.

According to a recent poll in Germany 56% diapprove of it being back on again.

I watched the matches yesterday at my local cigar lounge and could not feel any passion for so called "ghost matches".

I would love to have the old normal and watch a match in the stadium smoking a cigar & drinking a beer - but that will have to wait.

http://flyingcigar.de/smoking-cigars/201203-goals-steaks-and-cigars-a-perfect-saturday/

You could smoke in the stadium?  Nice!

[Nino]

I enjoy reading about soccer by Rory Smith.

Here is his take on the Bundesliga being back and specially on Borussia Dortmund, fantastic photographs as well from Dortmund in the article.

Growing up near Dortmund as a kid, my first visit was to the Rote Erde stadium in Dortmund and the club is my favourite here. One of my good friends went as far as painting his house yellow & black ... ?

This Is What Watching Sports Looks Like Now

In Germany, soccer returned with games in empty arenas, forcing a nation of fans to cheer their clubs from afar. Can we learn to love this new reality, at least for a while?

By Rory Smith

• May 18, 2020, 2:00 a.m. ET

As soon as you leave Dortmund’s central station, you see the black and yellow. Decked out in the team’s luminous colors, Borussia Dortmund’s club shop draws the eye from across the square.

In the city center, the smiling faces of Dortmund seem to beam out from every other billboard. In the suburbs, flags and banners hang from streetlights throughout the year. There are people wearing scarves and people wearing hats and people wearing jerseys, whether it is match day or not, binding everything together in black and yellow.

After a while, it starts to feel less like Dortmund is a city that happens to be home to a soccer team and more that it is a soccer team that has somehow generated a city around it.

Soccer is a game, of course. But it is also a sport, which is what a game becomes when enough people invest in it, financially or emotionally. And it is a business, too, which is how sport metastasizes when the emotional investment generates a return on the financial. But it is also — maybe it is mostly — a form of identity, a sense of belonging.

That is true everywhere, but it is in places like Dortmund where it most easily drifts into focus: a city given over to a team, where in the hours before a game everyone seems to be talking of the same subject, walking in the same direction, dreaming of the same outcome.

Soccer did not return to Dortmund, and to the rest of Germany’s Bundesliga, this weekend. Rather, a new form of it — a vision of its unwanted, unavoidable short-term future — made its debut: acoustic, pared back, stripped of the spectacle that lends it power. The streets were quiet. The stadiums, guarded by the police and ringed by steel, were empty.

Many of the bars and restaurants permitted to open chose to remain closed, mindful of the virus’s risks, fearful of the consequences of even small gatherings. Many of the fans who might have packed them, once upon a time, had tuned out. A poll, by the German television network ZDF, had found that 62 percent of fans would have preferred to cancel the season entirely than play out a pale imitation in the shadow of a pandemic.

There was enough interest, though, for Sky Germany’s coverage of the first round of games — headlined by Dortmund’s derby with its fierce rival, Schalke — in this bleak new world to draw in six million viewers, a record, each of them watching from home, atomized and all but alone, a tribe still bound by its colors but unable to gather under its standard.

 

To some, what they watched was not soccer but mere business, a transaction devoid of emotion, an event held simply to protect broadcasting revenues. Sport, after all, does not have an inherent purpose; we imbue it with meaning, with consequence, and the fans in the stands serve as avatars for the millions more watching at home, their reactions shaping and reflecting ours.

Most of Germany’s powerful organized fan groups had made it plain that games played in isolation, without the public, without the spectacle, could only ever mean nothing. A slim banner was displayed in the stands for Augsburg’s game with Wolfsburg. “Soccer will survive,” it read. “It’s your business that is sick.”

In those first few minutes of play on Saturday, as the players tried to shake off the rust in front of gray, still stands in six cities, and two more on Sunday, it was hard not to wonder whether it had any meaning at all. It was not a spectacle. Without the spectacle, it is hard to make a case for it as a business. Without the business, the sport — at least in its current form — cannot go on.

But then, with a little less than half an hour played, something happened. Dortmund’s Julian Brandt flicked the ball into the path of his teammate Thorgan Hazard. His cross evaded Schalke’s defense. Erling Haaland took two paces, opened his body, and steered the ball home: the first goal of soccer’s immediate future.

In that moment, you could see beyond the silence and the grayness and the sorrow, beneath the business and the sport, that soccer is just a game. But it is a good game.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/18/sports/soccer/bundesliga-soccer-fans.html?campaign_id=2&emc=edit_th_200518&instance_id=18496&nl=todaysheadlines&regi_id=83141946&segment_id=28239&user_id=20e2ef107d129c8068f6a6f86ee4c0a5

[Nino]

4 minutes ago, Smokecigareveryday said:

You could smoke in the stadium?  Nice!

Of course - still can ... ?

[Sver]

Good to see something has started at least.

Lewa on the scoresheet, business as usual