It felt fitting that James Richardson was the man to reintroduce live football to our TV screens.
Just as in 1992 when he fronted Channel Four’s Serie A coverage for the first time, here he was welcoming the curious and the sceptical, this time to the Bundesliga.
You could rely on a consummate professional like Richardson to judge the temperature correctly.
With his not too over-hyped not too understated “hello everybody and welcome back to football” he wasn’t trying to kid anybody on. We all know closed-doors sport isn’t the full experience but for a lot of us, it is certainly better than nothing.
And there is no shame in actually enjoying it.
Starting off with the Revierderby, Borussia Dortmund v Schalke, came with bigger anti-climax potential than possibly any other German fixture bar BvB v Bayern. The greatest contest in this local rivalry’s 94-year history is still fresh in the memory – a 4-0 that became a 4-4, with the 2017 Schalke side urged on to an incredible comeback by a fervent away support.
How could a clash with two teams working their way back to fitness in front of empty stands and masked, socially-distanced substitutes not come across as the palest of imitations?
We got the 4-0 Dortmund bit again but even if Schalke had repeated the symmetry on their side of the scoreline, there would have been no pleasing the ‘all or nothing’ brigade.
The sooner you come to terms with the fact that atmosphere in football grounds just won’t be a thing for a long time, the sooner you’ll appreciate this product for what it is – a game of football that resembled the normal stuff in a lot of ways.
It wasn’t like a pre-season friendly as critics will lazily label it.
It was two sides whose league had been shut down for 61 days working their way back to match fitness and putting in as much effort and commitment as you would normally expect them to.
The players in yellow and black were better than we had any right to expect them to be. Erling Haaland is still very good, so are most of his team-mates and that is why they won comfortably.
The mixture of elbows and choreographed dance moves for goal celebrations didn’t offend. And those of us whose O Grade German was passed (just) a long time ago can’t offer any insight on whether apologising for swearwords will become a staple part of a commentator’s job if and when English Premier League players are back on the football field.
Am I going to become a Bundesliga addict, gorging on every minute of live action BT Sport can throw at me? No.
But am I looking forward to seeing the top flight down south concluded on the pitch rather than in a conference call battle between points-per-game and weighted points-per-game? Yes.
And will I be grateful when the next Scottish Premiership season gets started, possibly even played out, behind closed-doors? Yes again.
Football without fans is compromised, no doubt about that, but don’t try to tell me football without fans is nothing.
