At 3:32 p.m., local time, referee Deniz Aytekin blew his whistle. Erling Braut Haaland took the opening kick, and the biggest game on the first weekend of the Bundesliga’s resumption, Borussia Dortmund against Schalke, was underway–two minutes later than scheduled for no other reason, it seemed, than that Aytekin and his assistants were slightly delayed in taking the field.
Football was back, not quite as we’ve come to know it, but back nonetheless. The players emerged from the tunnel socially distanced, in keeping with new protocols brought on by the coronavirus pandemic. The masked substitutes took their places on widely spaced-out seats stretching along the front of one stand.