British Audiences Set To Embrace German Football If It Returns Swiftly And Safely

Amidst the uncertainty of a global pandemic it remains an impossible task to pin down precisely when football will return in any meaningful form.  The necessity of caution is understandably taking precedence over any pressing desire to resume sporting competition and on a seemingly weekly basis plans are being proposed more in hope than with any real conviction.

On Tuesday the Prime Minister of France Edouard Philippe announced that the Ligue One and Ligue Two seasons are to be voided and this follows similar decisions taken in Holland and Belgium to cancel the 2019/20 campaigns in the Eredivisie and Jupiler Pro League respectively. The rest of Europe’s top leagues meanwhile plow on, maintaining a serious intention to complete their truncated seasons and to that end it is pertinent that UEFA this week issued a 25 May deadline to all of its 55 associations to submit realistic plans on how this can be achieved.

The ethics of doing so, as the coronavirus crisis continues to take its awful toll, is open to debate as too are the logistics behind restarting football in such a climate but on a more frivolous note what intrigues is the acknowledgement that some of the footballing organizations across the continent are further advanced in their preparation than others, or at the very least are more sure of their footing. This leads us to believe that the game will not return in any coordinated manner but rather in a staggered fashion, with some countries recommencing their 2019/20 campaigns ahead of their counterparts.

On Wednesday the Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte gave the go-ahead on national television for Serie A players to undertake individual training from 4 May with group sessions permitted two weeks hence. “Then we’ll evaluate if there are the conditions to allow the season to be completed,” he concluded.

It has been tentatively slated that the 12 remaining rounds of Serie A fixtures will resume at the end of May, finishing in early August.

In Germany, the Bundesliga is set to kick off again at an earlier date though initial hopes of a 9 May resumption now looks unfeasible. There, players have been training in small groups following a relaxation of social distancing measures but fresh concerns over an increase in Germany’s virus reproduction rates has prompted calls for tighter controls to be reintroduced and even a second lock-down. A meeting between the federal government and their state counterparts on 30 April will clarify matters but it is fair to assume that a postponement is likely if only by a week or two.

Either way, Christian Seifert, the Bundesliga’s CEO has confidently asserted that they are ready for action. Either way, German football will return significantly sooner than its English equivalent.

Because in England the Premier League
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have persistently shown a clear determination to complete a season currently left hanging only they have overtly struggled to commit to a definitive approach. ‘World Cup-style’ camps in the Midlands have been mooted along with all manner of other possible solutions ranging from the plausible to the much less so and that brings us to the latest venture termed ‘Project Restart’ that will see games played in ‘approved’ neutral grounds with a strict minimum of personnel involved. With pre-season training scheduled across the board for the duration of May a target of mid-June has been set to resume a season that will surely result in Liverpool being crowned as champions with top four and relegation issues still to be decided.

What this means is that for a period of a fortnight or more English supporters, who have been starved of football now for nearly as long as a summer break typically lasts, will have the opportunity to embrace foreign fare with all the fascination that brings.

The Bundesliga games are penciled in to be broadcast via BT Sport and this evokes the strong attachment a British audience had with Serie A in the 1990s, with Channel 4’s Gazzetta Football Italia show swiftly gaining cult status.

Granted, these days the modern fan is much more attuned with leagues from far and wide but still a brief craze of sorts can be anticipated, with players acquiring new admirers and the back-story of teams researched.

If this offers up a plethora of marketing opportunities for the German clubs in question it would be inappropriate to go into details here, given the circumstances. Elsewhere however, it is relevant to highlight that betting companies will surely welcome the return of top class football, even if it initially takes place overseas. As long ago as early March an estimated £2 billion was wiped off the value of Britain’s best known bookmakers and it has hardly been an easy journey undertaken since.

Overall, it would be crass to term it a race as to which nation will first host competitive football again. What can be said with certainty though is that whoever does achieve this aim, safely and fingers crossed successfully, will immediately have a very popular brand for the foreseeable future.