Filed under: Football
The weather's not been all that, and we could have done without the looting and pillaging that's been going on outside, but other than that, the summer months haven't been unkind. The best Tour de France in years, thanks to the Homeric, if ultimately futile, efforts of the home hero Thomas Voeckler. A wonderful Open Championship, won by Darren Clarke, a links player extraordinaire, but one we'd all thought had missed the boat. And a scintillating series of Test matches, England proving they can hold their own against the best team in the world, India, to the point that they might actually become top dogs themselves. Eek.It's not over yet - England start their bid for Test supremacy at Trent Bridge today - but it might as well be. In case you haven't noticed - and if you haven't, hats off to you, how the hell have you done it? - the new English top-flight football season starts this weekend. The lower leagues are already underway. Scotland started sometime in April, I think, before the previous season had even finished.
It's as if the game's never been away. True fanatics might not give two hoots, but everything in moderation; the sport of Association Football no longer seems to know its place.
The summer tournaments, it should be noted, don't come into this. The women's World Cup was fantastic entertainment, not least because it was refreshing to see an England team compete without a sense of entitlement, even if they did make the same old kind of predictable exit the men have got us used to. Germany, France, the USA, Brazil and champions Japan all brought something to the table. There was a refreshing lack of petulance, more teams with a genuine chance of winning the tournament than at the men's version, and a fairytale ending, the nadeshiko winning Asia's first major prize in any type of football, a welcome boost for a country battered and bruised by earlier tragedies this year.
The Copa America was massive fun too, a litany of shocks, champions Brazil and hosts Argentina both being bundled out at the quarter-final stage, leaving the way clear for the smaller nations to enjoy their time in the sun. (Although should we really have been so surprised that Uruguay ended up winning their 15th title? They came fourth at the World Cup, having got furthest of all the south American sides, have the most potent partnership in international football in Luis Suarez and Diego Forlan, and can boast a well-put-together, coherent and settled team, which is something Argentina, for example, haven't been able to seriously claim since 1978.)
Those tournaments were special events, offering a sense of other, a break from the norm. Problem was, the domestic game didn't pipe down. Hot on their heels came the interminable pre-season friendlies. Time was, even the big clubs would do their pre-season preparations in private. Back in the 1980s, for example, Liverpool would pack their bags and spend a few days in Ireland, playing listless friendlies against local teams before going out to sink preposterous amounts of booze (and coming back to England to rack up another couple of trophies).
Nowadays, the Liverpools, Manchester Uniteds, Arsenals and Chelseas jet around the world to glamorous locations, where they run into the Barcelonas, Bayern Munichs, LA Galaxys and, er, Blackburn Rovers of this world. All the games are live on television. All of them mean nothing. They really should be hidden away.
Add to the fact that the coverage of Premier League football never stops - even on the day Rory McIlroy bounced back from his Masters nightmare to win the US Open, without question the one sporting achievement of the year that will resonate through the ages, football took centre stage in all the papers and on all the websites - and there's a real sense of fatigue creeping in.
This isn't to denigrate football in itself - at its best, the simplest game still offers the greatest thrills. But the sport's inability to shut its face during the summer isn't doing itself any favours. The new season seems to be starting with something of a yawn - we go again, if we must, rising reluctantly from our sun loungers - when really we should be springing up, full of beans, having not once thought of the domestic game for months.
This close season might not be the tipping point. With Euro 2012 slated for next summer, that one probably won't be, either. But soon enough, with wall-to-wall news stories and pointless televised friendlies saturating the summer, even the most rabid football fan may be gasping for air. Let us watch the cycling, a bit of golf, a day at the Test. There's going to be 10 months of domestic football. Give us a wee break next time, we might even love the sport more.
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Source: http://www.fanhouse.co.uk/2011/08/10/football-summer-sport/
Clarence Seedorf Cristiano Ronaldo Daniel Alves Daniele De Rossi David Albelda
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