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There were 209 days without an audience in the stands, from Leixões-Farense de Liga2. For the League even more, when we were far from knowing that Paços de Ferreira-V. Guimarães would be the last game without fans. Until yesterday. Santa Clara-Gil Vicente was one of the pilot meetings of the League and the General Directorate of Health for the return of citizenship. 873 spectators, all fans of Santa Clara, are in the stadium. And the nostalgia we had for applause, even insults.
Chairs were marked where you could and couldn’t sit. Five interval places to comply with social distance, even if they were members of the same household. Authorized data transfer for future monitoring of Covid-19 symptoms. Marked circulation circuits, use of mandatory mask. This is the new normal and only the next few days will tell you if what seemed like a success was actually a success. Pedro Proença was in Ponta Delgada and highlighted the moment.
«This is a time of great responsibility for professional football. 209 days have passed since Leixões-Farense and it was only possible thanks to the clubs that realized that they should have an attitude of great responsibility ”, the president of the Portuguese League told SportTV yesterday. Proença stressed that football interrupted competitions on March 12 of this year and that now was the time to return. “So far more than 20,000 tests have been carried out and football has been an activity subject to great scrutiny and one that has set a great example,” added Pedro Proença.
The afternoon was special. Santa Clara presented Clarinha, a cow that will be the new pet. There was an exchange of shirts between Rui Cordeiro and Francisco Dias da Silva, presidents of Santa Clara and Gil Vicente, respectively.
For Rui Cordeiro, the fact that Santa Clara received the first game with an audience in the middle of a pandemic was even more symbolic. “We were the team that stopped playing at home in the recovery process, which makes this curious return of the public to happen in the Azores curious. We are going to be the first to have an audience now, and I want to highlight the role of the League and the Regional Health Directorate, which was absolutely decisive ”, stressed the president of Santa Clara.
For the coaches it was also special. Daniel Ramos, from Santa Clara, spoke of “a great step.” Rui Almeida, from Gil Vicente, asked for “discipline.” Even Claude Gonçalves, Gil Vicente’s midfielder, was happy to have played with the crowd, although he was not a single Gil Vicente fan in the stands. The most difficult thing seems to be done and four more test games follow, with a 10 percent audience: Academic-Academic and Feirense-Chaves (Liga2), Portugal-Spain and Portugal-Sweden.
