Football without fans has placed a spotlight on the mistakes and placed the elite on a podium

On the eve of the return of the second major European league from lockdown, people will remember how German football fought against its very nature to force a return. That is what they are known for after all, football stadiums jam packed with fans, standing and cheering for their favourite clubs. In the near past, if one took the time to Google the Bundesliga, or even German football for that matter, the search result would be pages of stadiums chock full of fans. You would’ve seen Signal Iduna Park, Bayern’s Allianz Arena and a myriad more, all full of fans but things have changed now and that applies to everything.

As Arsene Wenger put it, in an interview with the Athletic, "In Germany, for example, you can see that in home games against bigger opponents, there is an element missing — that tension, that belief, that motivation that is coming from outside the pitch. You see that the internal motivation of the club is not big enough against the big clubs. The bigger teams have more quality, so a way to reduce the difference between the teams is, of course, to have the support of your fans and get that intensity into the game." But without that rousing atmosphere in the background, few across the world ever noticed the football on show but that has changed and with the change comes another one.

The last month has proved that brilliantly, whether it be Dortmund thrashing Schalke in Revierderby, Leipzig putting 5 past Mainz, Bayern beating Eintracht Frankfurt 5-2 or even watching Kai Havertz tear teams apart. Somehow, their better financial standing among the others have afforded them a luxury the other smaller sides haven’t been able to get their hands on. Whether it be better training facilities, better coaches or even a better/faster method to recover from games and those who say that doesn’t matter, clearly don’t know what they’re talking about.

Unsure if Joshua Kimmich’s chip was very good or Roman Bürki’s goalkeeping was very bad. Can it be both?

— MUNDIAL (H) (@MundialMag)

Open the Bundesliga schedule since the restart and almost automatically the number of 3 goals plus games stands out. The first three weeks had twelve, excluding games with 2-2 draws, including four on the very first weekend. Another look showcases the fact that clubs lower down the pecking order have been on the wrong side of those score-lines, more often than not which includes Union Berlin’s 2-0 loss to Bayern. Because that game, alongside the Der Klassiker, Eintracht Frankfurt’s loss to Bayern, and any of Leipzig’s wins since the restart, shows that the hustle, bustle and hard yards that teams put in don’t matter as much.

Not without that drive and that additional nervous energy that the fans bring but without that, only hard-work means nothing. Instead, being perfect means so much more as Roman Burki in the Der Klassiker proved rather brilliantly. Which has handed the elite an opportunity to thrive because in the moments that they need to be perfect in, they’ve operated at levels' of precision that humans being just don't achieve! But that’s something nobody should be surprised at but yet people will be because they’ve never noticed, teams playing badly and still winning because of one single moment.

Just look at Schalke and their problems since the restart with them losing to Borussia Dortmund, Augsburg, Werder Bremen and Fortuna Dusseldorf, earning just a point against Union Berlin. Now barring Dortmund, all the other sides are below the Royal Blues in the table and yet, David Wagner's side has struggled. Now their problems go way beyond match-fitness and a lack of fans but it doesn't help which has helped ease the pressure on their opponents and allow them to be perfect in moments they needed to be and moments they never should have gotten or even taken.

Perfection in few moments overcomes what was 89 minutes of bad performances with decisions being made at incredible speeds with machine-like precision and that’s what these elite sides have been bathed in over the years. It is why they’re innately prepared for this situation despite a large portion of their team being physically unfit to play football again. Even once they are fully fit again, the difference will only be magnified because of how much better the elite sides are, the difference in class between their players, coaches and everything else all combined into one melting pot. Yet, the even bigger thing is that if this is happening in the Bundesliga, then it will most definitely happen everywhere else.