They call it – this dark and airless trap in which we currently sit, grimly waiting to be released – an “international week”. But we know that’s a lie. Between the final whistle blowing at the Etihad last Sunday evening and kick-off at Burnley next Saturday lunchtime, Premier League football will have been mercilessly hauled up a siding and forced into abeyance for almost a fortnight. “International week” is literally only the half of it.
Are City back in it? Are Arsenal about to come over all anxious again? Are Liverpool over? Are West Ham back from the dead and does anybody care? These were among the delicious questions left spinning last weekend.
At which point the lights abruptly went down, and rose again on a training pitch in which some people in purple tops were running up and down between cones. And suddenly we were being asked to turn the full weight of our consideration to whether Jude Bellingham, Phil Foden and Harry Kane could reasonably be deployed in the same England starting XI – and then being told by Thomas Tuchel that they can’t, in fact, so get over it.
It is even worse than usual this time, of course, with England having already emerged from the wet paper bag which is their qualifying group, and facing two dead rubbers against I can’t even be bothered to look up who.
No jeopardy. No entertainment, either. “We will not start [experimenting] in this camp,” Tuchel soberly declared.
Spoilsport. Instead, death by boredom. I’ve been so bored this week that I even began to estimate Alex Scott’s chances of going all the way on I’m A Celebrity ... Get Me Out of Here! I’ve not paid much attention to events in ITV’s camera-infested jungle clearing for about five seasons now, having eventually arrived at the opinion that watching a celebrity served a piping hot dish of kangaroo testicles was a good joke, but one with diminishing returns.
But nobody agrees with me, clearly. And thanks to the void created by this tedious international “week”, I don’t seem to agree with me, either. So, yes, Scott will clearly have her work cut out, and Emmerdale’s Lisa Riley clearly can’t be underestimated around the campfire .
But if Scott can just keep it tight for the first 20 episodes, who knows? Maybe the former Arsenal and England right-back can kick on and show that Jill Scott’s ascent to the throne in 2022 wasn’t just a flash in the jungle pan but the beginning of a real period of domination for the women’s game. And at least she’ll be something to think about until the Premier League comes back.
Better that than thinking up ways in which football can be improved, something the BBC website filled some gaps with this week. That’s always dangerous.
Stop-clocks were one suggestion. True, the current method of estimating time added on does tend to look a bit shirtsleeve.
And like the quaintly pre-industrial means used to calculate 10 yards at free-kicks (“the spot thou seekest doth lie 10 paces in the direction of yonder goal by the girth of a stout yeoman’s legs”), it’s bound to sit uncomfortably in a sport which has also decided to measure offside digitally to within millimetres.
But a stop-clock? No. Because that way American sport lies, and American sport famously goes on for ever. Goals outside the box count double? Ugh. Sin bins? Snore. Meddling – that’s all it would be. Idle meddling.
But they’re at it with I’m A Celebrity, too. It was suddenly announced this week that no contestant would be subjected to more than two consecutive Bushtucker Trials – this to prevent the voting viewers from unpleasantly singling out a contestant for a nightly dunking in bugs.
Well, OK, those extended pile-ons did look uncomfortably like bullying by premium-rate text. But whither democracy and the people’s voice in the face of this egregious meddling with the system?
And if the producers were going to put Matt Hancock in there, what did they expect?
Good grief, though, why is this stuff even in my head? Because it’s an international week, that’s why. Which isn’t a week, in fact. Did I mention that? It’s a fortnight.
Photograph by James Gourley/ITV