Borussia Dortmund coach Thomas Tuchel and his Mainz counterpart Martin Schmidt have spoken about the eerie atmosphere inside Dortmund's Westfalenstadion on Sunday after a fan died of a heart attack.
Silence fell on the stadium with both groups of supporters paying their respects to a Dortmund fan who passed away after suffering a heart attack in the Sudtribune – Dortmund’s south stand.
Only in the final minutes of the game did they start to sing again, with a rendition of You'll Never Walk Alone echoing around the arena.
“I could sense something bad had happened,” said Tuchel at the post-match press conference. “For a long time, I didn’t know exactly what was happening, but then it was confirmed.
“The whole stadium struck the right balance between following the game while showing their sorrow.
“We all know that there are far more important things than football.”
Dortmund, who were leading 1-0 when the news spread, went on to win the game 2-0 with the scorer of the second goal, Shinji Kagawa, not able to bring himself to celebrate.
“I just wondered ‘why’s it all gone so quiet?’,” recalled Schmidt. “I don’t know how the word got around so quickly, but it was impressive.
“It wasn’t easy to coach. It just felt so strange screaming at your players.
“It affected everybody somehow. We, the team, and I personally are obviously thinking about those affected by this tragic incident.
“I think it’s amazing how 80,000 people can fall silent in the space of just a few minutes.”
For Dortmund defender Mats Hummels, who was on the field for Germany at the Stade de France when suicide attacks took place just outside the stadium last November, it brought back some bad memories.
“It was surprising to begin with because we didn’t know what had happened and we didn’t have any information,” he said. “Yet we still had to play our game and do our job.
“We were asking each other what could have happened, because we had kind of guessed that something was amiss because it was an unusual atmosphere.
“I’d only experienced this before in Paris. There were big similarities, like the silence and calm in the stadium.”
After the final whistle, Dortmund's players were told what had happened and they lined up, arm in arm, in front of the Sudtribune for a further rendition of You'll Never Walk Alone.
“There are more important things than football, which is only secondary at a time like this,” said midfielder Nuri Sahin.
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