In the not too distant past, the summer was mostly a football-free zone. Not any more.
In his book Fever Pitch, Nick Hornby described the end of the season as a football fan’s equivalent of New Year’s Eve.
“Our years, our units of time, run from August to May (June and July don’t really happen, especially in years which end with an odd number and which therefore contain no World Cup or European Championship) ...” he wrote. “... it is after the FA Cup Final in May that our mental clock is wound back, and we indulge in all the vows and regrets and renewals that ordinary people allow themselves at the end of the conventional year.”
In the quarter of a century since he wrote those words, such time for retrospection has all but disappeared from the modern game.
Only hours after Barcelona’s Uefa Champions League victory over Juventus officially signalled the end of the European domestic season on June 6, the Women’s World Cup was kicking off in Canada.
The U20 World Cup had already begun in New Zealand, while the Copa America in Chile started on Thursday and the Uefa European U21 Championship kicks off on Wednesday in the Czech Republic.
All this half way through a year that has already seen an Asian Cup in Australia and an African Cup of Nations in Equatorial Guinea.
Then there is the 2018 World Cup qualifiers, the 2017 Nations Cup qualifiers and the Euro 2016 qualifiers, which have taken place over the past week.
Club football may still dominate August to May as it did in Hornby’s day, but international football has taken over the summer turning the game into a year-round sport.
No football-free summer holidays any more – football takes a break for no one.
Competitions in odd-number years are nothing new, but the football tournament market has never been as saturated – not that fans are complaining.
It is not often Mali can beat Germany in a World Cup quarter-final, as their U20s did on penalties, or a Copa America match featuring Lionel Messi, Sergio Aguero, Angel di Maria and Carlos Tevez attracts almost 10,000 fewer spectators than Cameroon’s clash with Ecuador at the Women’s World Cup.
On Wednesday, the obsessive among us can – if they have time – juggle four Women’s World Cup clashes with the Copa’s River Plate derby between Argentina and Uruguay.
Catch the Brazil versus Senegal, Serbia versus Mali U20 World Cup semi-finals; then view the U21 Euro opener between Czech Republic and Denmark followed by Germany’s clash with Serbia.
Then it all starts again the next day leading up to July 4 and 5, which, respectively, have been set down to see new Copa America and Women’s World Cup champions crowned.
By then the first leg of the Europa League’s first qualifying round would have already taken place. Officially, the domestic campaign across Europe would have started and we will not have had time to blink.
akhaled@thenational.ae
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