German return rules rob the game of all legitimacy

Don’t expect to see scenes like this games resume

I don’t think anyone on the planet will convince me that the planed German return to Bundesliga action should be replicated in the Premier League.

For weeks we have been hearing about the integrity of the league being compromised by nulling and voiding the season.

But the restrictions under which the Germans plan to complete the Bundesliga hardly fulfill the requirements of ensuring a satisfactory end to the season.

Among the restrictions placed on clubs are for example

• Contact training should be minimised with team meetings held in big rooms and only for ‘compelling reasons’, with players keeping two metres apart. No eating will be allowed in the kitchen and food must be taken away.
• Starting line-ups and subs should change in different facilities and warm up separately. Their time spent in the dressing-room will be kept to a minimum with two-metre social distancing imposed and players will shower individually.
• Substitutes on the bench are also set to sit two or three seats apart with some seated up in the stands if needed.
• Teams should either have their own hotel or have their own floor, with their own entrance and elevator, to avoid contact with other hotel visitors and maintaining two-metre distancing between each other

That just a random selection of what faces players whose minds should be entirely concentrated on the game ahead. Instead they will be expected to play fiercely competitive games whilst having to cope with the worries and anxirty presented by the pandemic.

And what happens for example if one or two of the most important players in a team test positive whilst the opposition remain free to field their best team.

And what about the less fearless players – every team has them – who will be very cautious about getting into the kind of ‘contact’ tackles which are necessary.

Sorry, I want my football back but none of this works for me and it is absolutely no way to gives the game back the legitimacy some very pompous people are demanding must happen.

But it’s not about that really of course. As has been said many time – it’s about dough, the whole dough and nothing but the dough!

These rules simply rob the game of  legitimacy!