On normal days, the fans in Dresden celebrate a special ritual: shortly before kick-off, the whole block behind the gate closes their hands over their heads in ever faster rhythm at the signal of the predecessor and calls the club name in staccato: “DY” – “NA “-” MO “. This leads to decibel numbers, which in most stadiums are not even achieved when the goal is celebrated. On Sunday, at 0-2 in the ghost game against VfB Stuttgart, just before the kick-off, you could only hear the ventilation system under the grandstand. The fan block was empty. But before him a huge banner was emblazoned: “With anger in the stomach and clear mind destroys your opponent and association”, it said.
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The fans are not the only ones in Dresden who think that their club alone would pay the bill for the early restart of the first and second leagues. While elsewhere the health authorities only isolated the infected players, in Dresden the entire team was quarantined after two positive corona tests. No player was allowed to leave his apartment. So while the other 17 second division teams have been in team training for weeks and have already played three games, Dynamo has played eleven-against-eleven exactly twice since the beginning of March. On Wednesday in training. And now, on Sunday, against Stuttgart.
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“Nobody has done that before, unless they want to drive the Tour de France”
“We come from the balcony, did strength training there and in the living room and went cycling. Nobody has done that before, unless he wants to ride the Tour de France”, coach Markus Kauczinski complained before the game. It is a “shitty feeling”, “when you are damned to watch, when there is nothing you can do to get to the booth.”
But the unequal test of strength on Sunday was not as blatant as one might have expected. This was because Dresden fought self-sacrificingly and had opportunities to get at least one point. But it was also because Stuttgart only did what was necessary to control the opponent and made little of its 61 percent possession. For the two goals by Hamadi Al Ghaddioui (18th) and Darko Chulinov (88th) it was still enough.
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It is “important to win such games dirty”, Stuttgart coach Pellegrino Matarazzo said pragmatically. “But that was definitely not our best performance today.” The positive also prevailed for colleague Kauczinski. “We played against a top team that will be promoted to the first division. It was a very good game of ours for the level we are at now.”
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The depressing thing about the Dresden situation may not be that the club didn’t have the same starting position as the other teams on Sunday when it started again. But that there is no improvement in sight by the end of the season. One point separated Dynamo from the relegation place when the season was canceled, in the second half of the season they were eleventh. Now there are six points.
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To catch up to the three games, Dynamo must now play three English weeks in a row. A total of eight games in 27 days are on the program. It is not unlikely that the current state of fitness now becomes more important with each additional game.
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Does the “David vs. Goliath Setting” help?
What remains for the Dresdeners is the hope of a reaction to defiance. The David versus Goliath setting – which has sometimes been artificially spoken in recent years – has often given Dynamo an inner cohesion.
This is how it seems to be these days again: On Saturday evening, Dresden Ultras organized a pyro-action directly in front of the team hotel on the Elbe: The river water reflected the red flames in front of which the words “We together against the rest of the world!” emblazoned.
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