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By JAMES ELLINGWORTH

DORTMUND, Germany (AP) — Game day in the Bundesliga is a lot quieter than it used to be.

Instead of thousands of fans chatting and drinking beer outside the stadium, there were only a few locals out for a weekend bike ride as Borussia Dortmund prepared to host Schalke in a normally fierce local rivalry.

The German soccer league is resuming Saturday after a two-month break due to the coronavirus, but with no fans in the stadiums.

In the city center, longtime Dortmund fan Marco Perz sat outside the German Football Museum in a jacket patched with club emblems. He said he hasn’t missed a home game since the 1990s.

“I’d normally be on the South Stand right now, in the yellow wall,” he said, referring to the vast terrace which underpins Dortmund’s reputation for passionate support. Now Perz is planning to watch the game with a friend over food and a beer. “The main thing is to see the game,” he added.

Local authorities had pleaded with fans not to mass outside the stadium.

“Anyone who stands in front of the stadium because they want to follow the game has got it wrong,” Dortmund mayor Ullrich Sierau said Wednesday. “It’s an appeal to the good sense of all fans, and I’m sure that the fans of both Schalke 04 and Borussia Dortmund are sensible people.”

Dortmund fan Nicole Bartelt said she would stay away from the stadium — which she called “the temple” — in the hope of showing fans could be trusted to return sooner rather than later for games.

If fans gather, “we’ll end up waiting even longer to be back,” she said.

Dortmund’s last game was in an empty stadium too, but with big crowds outside.

Thousands of Paris Saint-Germain supporters gathered outside the Parc des Princes as their team beat Dortmund in the Champions League on March 11.

Those scenes — and the decision of PSG players to celebrate with the fans — showed that a game risks spreading the disease even without letting a single fan into the arena. During the following two days, the German, English, French and Spanish leagues all opted to suspend competition rather than play in empty stadiums, at least for the time being.

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