برچسب: why

August, for the football fan in general, is very hard to beat. Here’s why:

It’s high summer

Picture the scene. It’s January and the weather hasn’t risen above zero all day. It’s basically already dark. It’s a league game against someone northern (I don’t actually remember who it was against, and perhaps it wasn’t against someone northern but I just associate the cold with the north). Not a lot is happening, but almost in unison the north bank starts bouncing up and down on the spot. Not as some kind of choreographed terrace spectacular, but because we all implicitly know that if we don’t start frenziedly hopping up and down we would all expire from frostbite.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why I would prefer football to be a summer sport. Just think how much more pleasant it would be in the warmth of summer, or what passes for it in the UK. We could all noodle outside a bit, perhaps in a beer garden, then enjoy the dappled sun on the pitch before going home to plenty more hours of sunlight. The season could end just before the bleakest months of the year and recommence with spring just round the corner.

Instead, we enjoy about 6 weeks of warmth before it all goes to pot. Only in early May (or April if we are lucky) does the sun make any form of contact with any part of our body that isn’t our face or hands.

Optimism is universal

August is the only point of the season where every single football fan isn’t at least a little bit optimistic. Squads are being remodelled, the slog of the previous season has retreated into the past, everyone has had a bit of time off and hope is in the air. I have no empirical evidence to prove it, and can’t be bothered to find it, but I suspect attendances on the first day of the season are at their zenith. 

It’s the hope that kills you though. If you are lucky, as Arsenal have been over the years, then August folds into September with the minimum of bumps, and you can look forward to building some momentum and having a good season.

This is not the experience of most football fans, though. By September, an awful lot of them will have already realised that hope has not sprung eternal. In fact, it’s not sprung at all. Hope is a mirage; a fickle beast. They will look back wistfully at August and probably sigh.

The chequebook is well and truly out

As we know, new arrivals are like paraffin on a bonfire. All of your team’s ills can be cured – or so it seems – by millions of pounds being dropped on some new players, and August (especially after a summer tournament) is the time when this all gets turbocharged. It’s breathless and silly, and reporting on it is an entire industry in itself, with its own language, but it’s hard not to get caught up in the excitement.

A cursory glance at NewsNow confirms it. The current favourite is to put everything into quotes – ‘incredible’ player wants out, contract agreed with ‘world-class’ star, ‘transfer clause agreed’. Then there are the old classics, when players become wantaway stars, teams start swooping and – my favourite of all time – when players issue come-and-get-me pleas.

I’ve always wondered how you issue a plea. It probably involves a trip to the Post Office.

I fall for it all, hook line and sinker. Even though the Euro final was only 15 days ago, it feels like ages since the final game of the season (it’s 73 days and that feels as long as it sounds). I have forgotten the disappointment, and armed with a Calafiori I am ready to go into battle again.

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