Germany’s minister for the interior and sport said Sunday he supports a resumption of the country’s football season this month despite the coronavirus epidemic.

“I find the schedule proposed by the German league
plausible and I support the restart in May,” Horst Seehofer told Bild
newspaper, three days before a meeting of German authorities to discuss the
issue.

The German Football League (DFL) backs a resumption of
matches without spectators around mid-May, which would make it the first major
European championship to make such a move.

Seehofer, who plays a key government role on the issue as he
holds several portfolios, has emphasised that the teams and players must
respect several conditions.

“If there is a case of coronavirus in a team or its
management, the club as a whole, and eventually also the team against which it
last played, must go into quarantine for two weeks,” he said. “There
will continue therefore to be risks for the schedule of matches and for the
classification,” if there is any contamination.

But he said clubs would not have any special testing
privileges denied to the rest of the population. Some sides had suggested
carrying out frequent tests of their players as a preventative measure against
the virus.