by Tommaso Adami
It's Tuesday afternoon, but it feels like one of the craziest footballing weekends of the season hasn’t ended yet. It was especially Saturday that made for some very interesting headlines. The day started with the rather inexplicable news of a jumble of postponed games in Italy, proceeded to one of the most unique scenes you'll ever see in a professional match of any sport during the final minutes of Hoffeneim-Bayern München and eventually wrapped up with the sudden, unpredictable end to Liverpool's 44-game unbeaten run at Vicarage Road. To top it all off, on Sunday Atalanta thrashed their opposition by scoring seven goals in a game for the third time this season, and Real Madrid defeated Barcelona in what turned out to be one of the most underwhelming Clasicos ever put in display in recent years. Here is a closer look at the weekend's most discussed topics in two of Europe's top leagues, Serie A and Bundesliga.
FOOTBALL IN THE TIME OF CORONA - As the northern part of Italy faces an unprecedented health crisis in the wake of the Coronavirus outbreak, on Saturday morning Lega Serie A put out an official statement saying that the five league fixtures initially to be played behind closed doors would not take place during the weekend, and would instead be rescheduled for Wednesday, 13 May 2020. Udinese-Fiorentina, AC Milan-Genoa, Sassuolo-Brescia, Parma-SPAL and the much-anticipated Derby d'Italia between Juventus and Inter saw a sudden halt that was received as a true scandal by a majority of the actors involved. Logically, the statement signed by the Italian League's President Paolo del Pino set a dangerous precedent. In fact, while UEFA allowed that Thursday night's international fixture between Inter and Ludogorets be played behind closed doors to prevent contagion, Lega Serie A deemed a similar type of event as threatening to national safety. To make such a decision all the more absurd, it later became known that Paolo del Pino had initially proposed that Juventus-Inter be played on the following Monday night with regular attendance, as if the virus would have suddenly disappeared overnight. Additionally, as many pointed out, none of the weekend's Serie B fixtures underwent schedule changes. Games like Venezia-Cosenza, Cittadella-Cremonese and Chievo-Livorno all took place in Veneto, one of the regions with the most cases of Coronavirus in the country, yet nobody even mentioned the possibility of rescheduling them.
Lega Serie A's controversial decision not to play some games behind closed doors especially made the calendar of remaining fixtures extremely complex for a number of teams, sparking the outspoken disillusionment of a few Serie A managers (namely Napoli's Gennaro Gattuso and Lecce's Fabio Liverani) and the harsh resentment of Inter's President Steven Zhang, who went as far as calling Paolo del Pino "a clown" in a controversial post published last night on Instagram. On Sunday afternoon, it became known that also Monday night's fixture between Sampdoria and Verona would be postponed, and midfielder Miguel Veloso shared all of his disappointment for the mishandling of the situation on social media: "A whole week to decide whether we should play or not. The team, the staff, the personnel... We've all been in Genoa since 5pm without any concrete news. Now we're on the bus to go to Verona. I find this situation shameful, it is a lack of respect towards everybody involved. In such a delicate and important moment for all Italian families, authorities should avoid contradicting each other and treating people and entire sports clubs as if they were toys".
SERIE A ACTION - Luckily, the games that took place delivered some rather spectacular football, as 21 total goals were shared among eight teams. On Saturday afternoon, Simone Inzaghi's relentless Lazio looked as solid and determined as ever in the 2-0 home win over Bologna, conquering the top of the Serie A table for the first time in 20 years and managing to stay undefeated for the 21st consecutive league game. Meanwhile Gattuso's new-look Napoli also continued their positive streak of consecutive domestic wins to three, overcoming a freefalling Torino side 2-1 at the San Paolo.
On Sunday, Gian Piero Gasperini's ruthless Atalanta delivered yet another mesmerising display of attacking football by defeating Lecce seven goals to two. So far this season, Bergamo's Nerazzurri have found the net 70 times in 25 games (that's almost three goals every match) and have already scored seven goals in a game against three different Italian oppositions. Given these figures, it wouldn't be surprising if Atalanta eventually won the race for best attack in Europe over Bayern München, who have so far scored 71 goals in 24 league appearances. A thrilling 3-4 match-up between home side Cagliari and Roma wrapped up the short weekend of effective Italian football, resulting in the sacking of Cagliari manager Rolando Maran, was officially replaced by former Inter legend Walter Zenga earlier this afternoon. After a brilliant start to the season, the Sardinians have in fact failed to win a league game in over three months and are currently sitting 11th in the standings, a mere ten points above the relegation zone.
ULTRAS VS HOPP - One of Europe's most thrilling title races sees Bayern München, RB Leipzig, Dortmund and Borussia Mönchengladbach all fighting on an even footing for the prestigious Meisterschale. Over the past weekend, RB Leipzig were the only of the four sides to drop precious points in their 1-1 draw to 5th-place Leverkusen, while their direct competitors managed to snatch all three points from their opponents. The most unique event of the Bundesliga weekend, however, is not directly connected to any of the teams' nor the players' performances.
On Saturday, as Bayern München were thrashing Hoffenheim 6-0, in the final minutes of the game a section of traveling Bavarian supporters unfolded offensive banners aimed at Hoffenheim's chief financial backer Dietmar Hopp. The referee proceeded to put in place step one of UEFA's anti-racism three-step protocol by stopping the game, as Bayern manager Hans-Dieter Flick took the field to try and personally persuade his own fans to stop the protest and remove the offensive banners. The football game eventually resumed, however, at the 77th minute, referee Christian Dingert halted the match yet again as the placards calling Hopp "a son of a wh***" still hadn't been removed. This time even Bayern's executives and club legends Hasan Salihamidzic, Oliver Kahn and Karl-Heinz Rummenigge descended from the stands to go talk to the supporters while the players and the staff of both teams were asked to leave the pitch and head towards the tunnels (step two of UEFA's three-step protocol). When the game eventually resumed with 13 minutes left to play, the footballers on the pitch refused to compete in play and decided to pass the ball to each other in a sign of protest until the final whistle. When the latter came, players, staff members and executives of both teams, including Hopp, walked onto the pitch, shook hands and hugged each other under the rain all the while applauding Hoffenheim's supporters in a sign of mutual respect and fraternity. After the game, Bayern manager Flick went as far as calling Bayern supporters "idiots", while Rummenigge confessed to being highly embarrassed by what had happened and publicly
apologised both to Dietmar Hopp and to the entire Hoffenheim family.
THE 50+1 RULE - The reason behind the controversial fan protest is to be found in Herr Hopp's alleged circumvention of the German Football Association's "50+1 rule", an event that dates back to 2015. As brilliantly explained by Matt Ford in a recent Copa 90 article, the peculiar rule "ensures that a club’s members, in other words the supporters, always hold the majority [50+1=51%] of the voting rights" in order to prevent "external entities from acquiring a majority stake". However, in case "an investor can prove they have supported the sport of football within the parent club substantially and continuously for more than 20 years, they are entitled to apply for an exemption from the 50+1 rule to enable them to take over full control of the club". This is namely the case for Dietmar Hopp, founder and owner of software company SAP, who has helped his boyhood club TSG 1899 Hoffenheim reach the Bundesliga and even the UEFA Champions League group stage after 110 long years in the German lower leagues. On paper, there is nothing wrong with Hopp's actions; however, in a league that takes so much pride in such a populist rule, it is easy to understand why both the club and its de facto owner are not so popular in the eyes of the most traditionalist Bundesliga fans.
While one can agree or disagree with the way Bayern München's fans voiced their loathe towards Dietmar Hopp, it's ought to be known that the Hoffenheim owner had recently pressed charges against Borussia Dortmund fans, whom he had managed to record via hidden microphones as they were repeatedly insulting him during a 2018 match-up between the two teams. As a consequence, on 21 February 2020 Borussia Dortmund fans were officially handed a two-year away ban at Hoffenheim by the German Football Association, an event that unsurprisingly united historical ultras rivalries across the Bundesliga. On the day following Sunday's Hoffenheim-Bayern München game, the fixture between FC Union Berlin and Wolfsburg was also suspended twice before halftime, as home supporters unveiled yet another highly offensive banner aimed at Hopp that strongly resembled a death threat.
AND WHAT ABOUT MONKEY CHANTS? - While football stadiums certainly shouldn't be home to loathsome insults and hatred, we should ask ourselves why referees have proven to be so responsive in halting football games when a billionaire is insulted from the stands, yet they often appear to be extremely hesitant when players are the targets of continuous and indefensible racial slurs. In those circumstances, referees often seem not to hear the insults and, as has happened already this year, they sometimes proceed to even book those players who demand the game be stopped. The image of both Hoffenheim and Bayern players, as well as the staff and the executives, all hugging each other after the game in the name of mutual respect is surely beautiful and makes for a great picture. However, most fans across the world would like to see such things happening especially when players are unjustifiably and repeatedly abused because of the colour of their skin. That would make for an even better picture.