Five years ago, the Covid lockdown changed football forever. FC Bayern played 32 matches without spectators at the Allianz Arena and celebrated some of the biggest triumphs in their history. What it really left, though, is one realisation: how important fans are to the beautiful game. Journalist Patrick Bauer recalls the period in FC Bayern members’ magazine ‘51’.
On 23 May 2020, FC Bayern won 5-2 at home to Eintracht Frankfurt at the Allianz Arena – and I don’t remember it. Of course, I watched the match, I’ve watched every Bayern match since the second half of the UEFA Cup second leg at Norwich City in 1993, before my parents sent me to bed – which was certainly the reason for our elimination then (I’m superstitious).
Of the many hundreds of matches that I’ve cheered and suffered through since then, countless scenes have stayed with me, particularly those that I’ve experienced live in the stadium. Moments that were inconsequential in hindsight, like a second yellow card for Mark van Bommel against Bochum in 2008 (it was in the 27th minute). And just as many crucial ones: I still remember like it was yesterday how Ribéry scored with a lob in his last home game and Robben, also playing his final match, bundled in a cross and both ran towards our block next to the Südkurve as if they wanted to personally say goodbye to me and my son. I still tell myself today they were looking straight at us. That was against Frankfurt, too. However, I can’t picture those five goals against Eintracht in 2020. I saw them from the sofa but nothing remains in my mind. And I know why: on Matchday 27 of the 2019/20 season, the first home match behind closed doors took place. The first of many.
A farewell celebration
What I do remember very well is the last home game before Covid stopped play, on 8 March 2020 against Augsburg. Three days later, the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared the outbreak of Covid-19 a pandemic. The spring-like sky shone blue, we celebrated 120 years of FCB, the tifos were all in red and white, and when Leon Goretzka made it 2-0 in stoppage time after a one-two with Serge Gnabry, the celebration was louder and longer than usual – because we all suspected what was coming. It was long after full time before I said goodbye to my season ticket neighbours; people who I only see here and only every two weeks, but with whom I have shared many victories and terrible dramas over the years. We all had tears in our eyes: “Take care of yourselves!” On that proud day, when we remembered the beginnings of this great club, something came to an end: football as we knew it.
„Our stadium is still a magical place when it's empty, but also a different one, an incomplete one. It needs the crowd.”
Patrick Bauer
Bayern held 32 home fixtures behind closed doors in all competitions, before the Arena was sold out again on 9 April 2022, almost exactly two years later, again versus Augsburg. If you include away matches and games in neutral stadiums, the team appeared in completely empty stands 64 times, as well as a number of matches with limited capacity. Bayern lost just six of these 64 matches, and only two at home. In the 32 home games at the empty Arena, we had a goal difference of 112-37. An incredible achievement by our team given that, according to an English study, home advantage was reduced by nearly a half by the so-called “ghost matches”. With fans, home sides gain an average of 0.39 points more than away from home. Without spectators it’s only 0.22 more. In full stadiums, home teams score 0.29 goals more than the visiting team on average. In empty stadiums it’s just 0.15 more. Our Arena remained a fortress during lockdown, though.
Goethe was right again
Obviously, it was good that football was still being played. It was good to celebrate and to suffer with Bayern. And to know that millions of other people around the world were feeling the same. And obviously, the pandemic was one of the club’s most successful periods from a sporting point of view, with the historic ‘sextuple’. Yet every match behind closed doors was a blow for me. And I wasn’t alone in that.
After the first match behind closed doors away to Union Berlin, Thomas Müller was reminded of “old men at 7 pm”; Joshua Kimmich of “U17s”. Both meant the same: the absence of the Reds. Unlike goal difference and points averages, atmosphere and its effect on the sport is hard to measure. However, I advise everyone to explore the Allianz Arena on a non-matchday sometime. Our stadium is still a magical place when it's empty, but also a different one, an incomplete one. Even Goethe wrote about the arena in Verona that a stadium has the task of “impressing the people with itself” and is “something great and yet actually nothing to see”. You can't put it more beautifully than Goethe.
When I’m in the stadium, there’s that moment time and again when something big – or everything – comes out of nothing. When the teams step out of the tunnel onto the turf; when the spark, the tension, the joy, the nerves from the stands spread into the field; when the chants spill from south to north and from the main stand to the opposite stand, it feels to me as if everything is falling into place. I can’t get enough of that feeling, that magic. And the games without spectators, as successful and spectacular as they were, always lacked that magic. We saw reduced, almost naked football. It wasn’t uninteresting, in fact to begin with it was really fascinating: it gave you a different understanding of the game, the tactical and technical subtleties, every individual tackle. The commands of Thomas “Radio” Müller could be heard so clearly, it was as if you were standing on the pitch yourself (“Super ball, King!”). It was solely about football.
But, being honest, my love for FC Bayern is about more than just football. When I talk about the Bayern match, there’s a reason I say “we”, even though my wife always looks at me (and my belly) in a strange way. Obviously I’m aware that I’d be out of breath after one sprint from the centre spot to the centre circle. However, my no less strenuous task is to keep to my secret rituals up there in Block 216 to fend off the football curses and then scream my head off. I don’t look at my phone once during those 90 minutes there, I merge into the masses, nothing distracts me. Maybe that’s why I don’t remember any of the goals from the matches without spectators? Well, I remember one obviously: Kingsley Coman’s header against Paris in the Champions League final is Lisbon, a goal for the ages, in the silence. But that doesn’t move me as much as Arjen Robben’s winning goal at Wembley in the 2013 final against Dortmund – even though I wasn’t in London either. And why? Because other fans celebrated there on my behalf, just as I celebrate for others at every home game.
I just watched the goals from the 5-2 win over Frankfurt in the first behind-closed-doors match again. There were some really nice efforts in there. Müller was the Man of the Match, setting up the first and scoring the second. When his team-mates congratulate him, you see our block in the background – the one where my son and I sit. And now I remember watching that match at home with my son and thinking: we’ll sit there again eventually, no matter what happens. That’s our place. And that feeling was so much more important than goals.
Patrick Bauer has won several prizes as a journalist and novelist. He works for the Süddeutsche Zeitung and is a lifelong Bayern fan and father of a very talented goalkeeper.
This articles appears in the current edition of “51”:
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