It is two months and 24 days since a ball was last kicked in La Liga.
On Tuesday 10 March, Real Sociedad won 2-1 away against Eibar in a game behind closed doors at the Ipurua. ‘Football sounds different behind closed doors,’ began Marca’s match report. ‘But that’s how it is and how it will be for a while. Until coronavirus finally leaves our lives. Hopefully that will be as soon as possible.’
The reporter could not have predicted the speed at which events would unfold after that match. A Real Madrid basketball player tested positive for the virus, forcing the club into two weeks of quarantine given the footballers share the same facilities. That in turn led to La Liga being suspended for two weeks at first, and then indefinitely when the full scale of the crisis became clear with Spain deep in a state of emergency.
Football was the last thing on people’s minds as Spain became an epicentre for the pandemic. The Santiago Bernabéu was turned into a storage and distribution centre for medical materials, clubs started putting non-playing staff on government-subsidised leave and the headlines coming out of Spain grew progressively worse as the virus claimed more and more lives.
A strict lockdown was put in place which hit the population hard, most of whom live in apartments. That is the case for my grandparents and aunt, who have spent much of the last three months cooped up in a block of flats in Madrid.
Conversations over the phone have been difficult. My grandad is the reason I follow Real Madrid and Spanish football more generally, a devoted Madridista since the days when his father would hoist him up on his shoulders to catch a glimpse of his heroes. This is what we would usually talk about: just how good Lionel Messi is – usually after he has taken Madrid apart in yet another Clásico – Zinedine Zidane’s tactics and how Karim Benzema is one of the most intelligent players he has seen.
Those opportunities have been few and far between during the pandemic. We have all had more pressing matters on our mind, our appetite for something as trivial as football dampened as we enter a bleak new reality.
And yet, now there is a glimmer of hope. The daily death rate has slowly gone down and the Spanish government has eased certain lockdown measures in parallel. There is a long way to go yet and the very real possibility of a second wave of infections, but for now things seem to be getting better rather than worse in Spain.
That paved the way for the return of top-flight football, with clubs gradually building up to full contact training in phases. La Liga president Javier Tebas has been one-minded in his determination to get football back on, meaning there have been no lengthy discussions between clubs.
And so, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced the game could resume from 8 June. The season will resume on 11 June with the strangest of Seville derbies and Tebas hopes it will finish on the weekend of 18-19 July. In the meantime there will be games on every day of the week during two of the hottest months in Spain as each club plays their 11 remaining fixtures.
It is a mad plan but it might just work. The games will of course be played behind closed doors, meaning fans will have to get used to that different sound once again. Tebas says they will get the choice between the real silence and simulated crowd noise, while there will be fan applause piped into the stadium as a tribute to the victims of the pandemic in the 20th minute of each game.
Tebas is also more optimistic – critics might say deluded – than most when it comes to when fans will be allowed back. He anticipates stadiums will be able to return to 30 percent capacity by 12 September, 50 percent by November and 100 percent by next January.
All this can ring false, especially coming from the man whose plan to move La Liga to the US showed a total disregard for Spanish fans. On Monday morning supporter groups from several clubs including Sevilla, Valencia, Eibar and Alavés hung banners outside training grounds with the message ‘No vuelve el fútbol, vuelve vuestro negocio’ – football isn’t coming back, your business is.
It is easy to sympathise with that point of view when it all seems like one big PR exercise for Tebas and La Liga. Can the free broadcast of all remaining games in care homes really boost morale after the horrific events of the past few months, for instance? As the legendary former Real Madrid and Argentina midfielder Jorge Valdano writes in his book 11 Powers of a Leader: ‘One must always be suspicious of those people or companies who are tempted to turn ethics into advertising’.
Then again, that is to underestimate football’s influence in Spain. For many of the older generations, watching or listening to games every Saturday and Sunday is a ritual which has been disrupted by the pandemic. Even in this diluted form, football can bring some comfort where it is most needed.
It is entirely normal to feel conflicted about the top European leagues resuming without their biggest asset in the stands. You can be wary of the financial motives behind the restart while still wanting to celebrate your team scoring a goal for the first time in two months, albeit in an empty stadium.
That is why I am excited for the return of La Liga, even if it will be a very different game to the one we are used to. It is football, just not as we know it for now. At the very least, dissecting Messi’s latest wondergoal will provide something different to talk about with my grandad when I next pick up the phone.
Play from the Back 