The Yellow Wall remained black, the color of the unfilled terraces. Borussia Dortmund’s fabled 25,000-man south stand didn’t have a single person on it, shorn of the usual thunderous thrum. All that was heard in Saturday’s Revierderby against arch rival Schalke 04 were the shouts of coaches and teammates and the thuds of big kicks, rattling around the empty Signal Iduna Park, filled to about 81,000 people below capacity.
But after 67 days, the Bundesliga was back. And 71 days after their own last matches, Dortmund and Schalke resumed their campaigns with, of all things, their hotly contested derby, a 4-0 thumping in favor of the home team.