At the entrances to the Heliodoro Rodríguez López they have installed a maximum precision digital thermometer. It is enough to bring the neck closer or bring the hand closer to detect if one has a fever. If this Monday what they had tested was the temperature of the match on the day that football returned, surely Tenerife-Malaga would have tested negative.
Everything was different in a soulless Heliodorus, stripped of the most sacred: the fans in the seats, the roar of the stands and the decibels of the crowds. The empty seats – they were an absolute majority – certified the seriousness of the unprecedented situation suffered by Spain and the whole world. And after 90 minutes there would still be doubts about the convenience of playing like that. With the silence of an operating room.
Where before there were scarves, now masks; where before flags, now hydrogel; where before palms, now gloves. The canned chants over the loudspeaker were the imposted soundtrack of an artificial show so conceived for television that the organization has installed a huge camera in front of the radio booths. From the SER location, you could hardly see anything, but the chronicler finds it impossible to prove it because from LaLiga they reminded him that he was not authorized to take images. Now, even with reduced visibility, the mess made football session was indisputable (and indisputable). Not even the clamorous occasions or the clear goal options were accompanied by the oops! of those who followed the game in the distance from the balconies, exception to the rule that there would be no public on a sad day for the long and rich history of Heliodoro Rodríguez López. Nostalgia for when the great feats of Tenerife had its foundations removed.
Tomorrow’s chronicles will say that football is back; the reality is that it was something else, even though the record of a scoreboard, some lineups (with up to five changes) and some referees who were not pressured or whistled by anyone was registered.
There were moments of deathly silence, a great anomaly in a Heliodorus used to offering his approval or issuing his censure on everything or almost everything. Also to the president of Tenerife, so many times whistled and this time sitting in the comfort of his armchair in an also very strange VIP box, two meters from each of his accompanying advisers. Surely even he missed some noise because this Monday at the Heliodoro everything was missing. No emotions; no feeling other than unease; zero sentiment and only one certainty: a stadium without an audience is like a beach without sand. This new football is sad as an epitaph.
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