Sunday, July 19, 2020

Soccer and Covid-19

We are about eight weeks away from the new season of soccer starting up in Germany (18 Sep).  The old season ended with 'ghost-games'....meaning players and coaches were there, with the ref's.....but no fans.  This was to help prevent the spread of Corona. 

Most teams will tell you (without journalists around) that they can't do long-term survival without the fans.  They need some element of the seats sold.

This topic got brought up today via ARD (public TV, Channel One).

The league (DFL) and the government are having talks.

The gov't says that games could be held, if some form of social distancing were to occur.  Naturally, it'd mean that a 40k seat stadium would be limited to probably 15k to 20k sold seats. 

Then the gov't said that some sanitizing concept would have to be employed (not saying how this would work).

The league?  They suggest that for whichever community is holding the game....the local infection rate should be used to figure seats available.  So if you had a real low infection rate and 40k seats....maybe you could sell a higher number (perhaps 30k)?

My suggestion is to do this partially like the Chinese....have some gals at the entry point checking for signs like sweat and high temperatures....force folks to do really extreme sanitizing....then have every other row empty of fans. 

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