BERLIN — Germany's Bundesliga is set to be given the green light for a restart, probably from May 15, as part of measures to further ease the country's coronavirus regulations, two people familiar with the preparations told Reuters.
The Bundesliga would be the first of the five major European domestic soccer leagues to resume play after a stoppage which has seen almost all football put on hold around the world since mid-March.
If the Bundesliga ever returns, Hertha Berlin’s Salomon Kalou will have to wait even longer after the club suspended him for violating strict social distancing guidelines on Monday.
The Ivory Coast forward posted a Facebook livestream video showing him breaking numerous rules, including shaking hands, fist bumping teammates, bursting into a room while some one was apparently being tested and, overall, just being a complete moron.
Ten people have tested positive for coronavirus in more than 1,700 tests carried out by Germany's professional soccer league (DFL) at its 36 clubs ahead a planned resumption of full training, it said on Monday.
The DFL, which tested players and coaching staff at the Bundesliga and 2.Bundesliga teams, did not identify those who had tested positive or their clubs and said the cases had been reported to health authorities.
Goalkeeper Loris Karius has terminated his contract with Turkish side Besiktas following a dispute over unpaid wages, the on-loan Liverpool goalkeeper said on Monday.
No decade in the Bundesliga’s 57-year history has been as thoroughly dominated by one club as Bayern Munich’s reign over the last 10 years. Apart from Borussia Dortmund’s back-to-back titles in 2011 and 2012, the rest of the 2010s were steamrolled by Bayern.
Over this period, the club routinely landed players in the Bundesliga's top 10 scorers each season. The notable examples include Arjen Robben, Thomas Müller, Mario Gómez, Mario Mandžukić and Robert Lewandowski.
German top-flight soccer team FC Cologne said on Friday that group training was continuing despite three people at the club testing positive for COVID-19.
In a statement the Bundesliga side said the entire squad and coaching staff had been tested on Thursday.
"Three people tested positive, all are symptom free," the club statement said. "After an assessment of the cases by the responsible health authorities, the three people who tested positive will go into a 14-day quarantine at home."
When the 2006 World Cup was over, eight of The Guardian’s 12 correspondents in Germany named it the match of the tournament. That sentiment has lasted 14 years as a recent poll on FIFA’s Twitter — with nearly 45K votes cast — declared it the one game from the 2006 competition that fans wanted to rewatch most.
And all this fervent nostalgia for a match that remained 0-0 over the course of the first 118 minutes of action in Dortmund.
Liverpool loanee Loris Karius wants to cut short his time on loan in Turkey with Besiktas, according to the Liverpool Echo.
According to Erdal Torunogullari, a Besiktas board member, Karius has filed a complaint with FIFA as a result of the club's decision not to pay players during the coronavirus shutdown.
Last month's Rhine Derby between Borussia Monchengladbach and FC Koln should've been a high-spirited event. Instead, it was played in an eerily quiet, empty stadium as the Bundesliga played out its first game behind closed doors as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
Now, the DFB (German FA) says playing in empty stadiums is the only way the competition could resume next month.
Of Europe’s top five leagues, Germany’s Bundesliga remains on course to be the first to return to the pitch. All clubs have resumed training in small groups, and the league still expects to return on Saturday, May 9.
However, Bundesliga chief executive Christian Seifert recently told the New York Times that although matches in the top two tiers would resume at the beginning of May, all the games would be played behind closed doors — a measure that’ll likely last through the remainder of the season.