The Bayern Munich midfielder Thiago Alcântara has hit out at the decision to play this weekend’s Bundesliga games, saying the situation is “crazy” . Most of Europe’s football leagues have been suspended but the Bundesliga said on Friday that the games scheduled for this weekend would go ahead behind closed doors.
Bayern are due to play Union Berlin on Saturday but the Spaniard criticised how the governing bodies has handled the situation, tweeting a reply to the German Football League: “irresponsible, imprudent! This is crazy. Please stop fooling around and land on reality. Let’s be honest, there are much more important priorities than sport.”
Uefa has postponed all of next week’s games in the Champions League and the Europa League while football in England, Spain and Italy has been suspended. In Germany, however, the DFL said that all the games in the top two divisions would go ahead this weekend but that they would then be suspended until 2 April.
A statement read: “Unless local government authorities stipulate otherwise, the matches for the upcoming Matchday 26 will be held for both leagues. The DFL Executive Committee has also decided that matches which, due to decisions by local authorities, must limit the number of people in the stadium for example, will be held on Matchday 26 in compliance with the relevant ordinances.”
Later on Friday the city of Bremen announced that it had taken the decision to cancel Werder Bremen’s game against Bayer Leverkusen on Monday night.
The Wolfsburg manager, Oliver Glasner, said: “It is a very bizarre situation. We are at the moment the only league in Europe who are carrying on. It doesn’t seem to be the most consistent decision.”
In the second tier, the Nürnberg player Fabian Nürnberger became the latest person to test positive for the virus, leading to the club putting every first-squad member in a quarantine for 14 days and cancelling the game against St Pauli.
