Live sports will return to Europe sometime soon. Following Germany’s federal and state governments deeming it safe for sports to conditionally resume on Wednesday, it was determined that the nation’s top soccer league, the Bundesliga, will resume play sometime later this month. The exact return date of the league, which has not taken the pitch since March 8 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, is still to be determined.

The news of the Bundesliga and its second division, 2.Bundesliga, relaunching comes after France’s top league, Ligue 1, called its season, while the top league in the Netherlands, the Eredivisie, cancelled its campaign altogether. Additionally, England is in the midst of trying to figure out what to do with the Premier League, something that applies for Italy’s Serie A, Spain’s La Liga, and the major European competitions, the Champions League and Europa League. In a statement, Bundesliga CEO Christian Seifert said “Today’s decision is good news for the Bundesliga and the Bundesliga 2. It is associated with a great responsibility for the clubs and their employees to implement the medical and organisational requirements in a disciplined manner.”

Due to Germany’s ban on mass gatherings that extends through August 31, fans will not be in attendance for matches, something that Seifert acknowledged is necessary, albeit “not an ideal solution.” Currently, the plan is for the league’s nine remaining matchdays to be played out between now and June 30, an important day in the global football calendar as it is the last day that players are under contract with their various clubs.

There is, of course, serious concern about making sure everyone is safe while these games are underway, even if fans are not around. The novel coronavirus does not discriminate, as evidenced by testing that has recently occurred, but there is no demand for clubs to isolate all of their players should someone test positive.

Via ESPN:

Players and staff have been tested for the coronavirus, and in a first wave, 1,724 tests were conducted on all 36 clubs of the upper two tiers late last week. Ten cases of COVID-19 were identified and reported to health authorities. Not all cases were made public, as the DFL asked clubs not to report cases individually. Full results from a second round of testing have yet to be released, although on the eve of Wednesday’s decision, second-division club Erzgebirge Aue put their entire squad in home isolation after a member of staff tested positive.

Infected people must isolate, but the DFL’s plan does not require full-squad isolation. The league has asked clubs to go into the final part of the season with a squad that can be filled with reserve or under-19 players.

The Bundesliga is perhaps the most compelling domestic league on earth. Many of the teams play an aggressive, up-tempo style of football, while its race to crown a champion has been a joy to watch all year. Currently, Bayern Munich sits atop the table on 55 points, with four teams in shouting distance of taking down the German giants: Borussia Dortmund (51 points), RB Leipzig (50 points), Borussia Monchengladbach (49 points), and Bayer Leverkeusen (47 points).

The coronavirus pandemic has thrown a huge wrench in a lot of album release cycles. Some artists have pushed their albums back, while others have moved their releases up. One big question has been the release of Lady Gaga’s Chromatica, as she has yet to offer a new release date for her upcoming record since postponing it (the album was previously scheduled for April). Now, though, she has, and it’s coming soon: Gaga took to Twitter today to reveal that her next album will be released on May 29.

A couple weeks ago, some big info about the album found its way online thanks to a Target pre-order page that accidentally spilled the beans. Most interestingly, it was revealed that the album will feature collaborations with Ariana Grande, Elton John, and Blackpink. The full 16-song tracklist was revealed, and some editions of the album (like the Target CD release) will have three bonus tracks.

Gaga, who is not a member of the Church Of Satan, is fresh off a huge charity fundraising campaign: He organized the Together At Home livestream concert event, which raised over $125 million for pandemic relief and featured performance from some of music’s biggest names, like Billie Eilish, Lizzo, and of course, Gaga herself.

Chromatica is out 5/29 via Interscope. Pre-order it here.

While many musicians are coping in quarantine by performing their songs in livestreams on their social media accounts, The 1975’s Matty Healy is cooking up something different. The singer instead tapped fellow indie musicians, like Clairo and Phoebe Bridgers, to perform covers of his band’s music for a tribute livestream concert.

Healy is currently staging a takeover of UK’s The Face magazine. For their website, the singer had the chance to interview other musicians like Kim Gordon, Stevie Nicks, and Brian Eno. Now, the singer is teaming up with the magazine to invite some of his favorite artists to cover popular songs from The 1975’s discography for a virtual tribute night.

During the stream, Palewaves, Cavetown, Beabadoobee, and Gracie Abrams will kick off the concert with covers. Clairo will then be performing a rendition of the band’s song “Robbers.” Phoebe Bridgers will follow with a cover of “Girls” and Rina Sawayama will close out the stream by taking on “Love It If We Made It.”

Check out the full schedule above.

Ahead of the livestream’s announcement, Healy opened up to The Face about their upcoming 22-track record, Notes On A Conditional Form: “I think that the question on this record is: can the center hold with all of this sh*t? Politically, economically, climate-wise — it feels like we’re getting under a lot of pressure. So there’s that on the record. And there’s also just a lot of personal stuff about me.”

The livestream kicks off 5/7 at 11 a.m. ET. Watch it here.

In an appearance on Jorge Sedano’s ESPN Los Angeles radio show on Tuesday, Hall of Fame inductee Charles Barkley reminisced on the surreal experience of being part of the star-studded Dream Team at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, adding new details about what it took just for the team to travel from place to place.

The celebrity status of Michael Jordan enveloped all members of the team, as the walk between the hotel and the bus was a circus.

“To leave the hotel and get on the bus was probably about 20 feet, and there was probably 5,000 to 10,000 people out there every single day just screaming when guys would walk to get on the bus,” Barkley said.

Then the team needed a full-blown motorcade just to get through the city, flush with machine gun-using men barreling down the street alongside the team bus.

“Wherever we were going, there was a helicopter above the bus, a police escort in front and in back, and on each side of the bus, there was two guys on motorcycles and each one of them had a machine gun.”

Though fans rarely could get very close to the players, they would line up along the highway to get a look at the squad’s biggest stars, saying that “there was people standing along the highway holding up signs for, obviously Magic [Johnson], Larry [Bird], and Michael got most of the signs, but it was flat-out amazing.”

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