It goes without saying that times have changed since Liverpool last lifted the Community Shield in 2006, the last time the showpiece was held in Cardiff. And it is trite but traditional to observe that the Community Shield is a glorified friendly that has little bearing on the season it introduces, though this year there is no need to say that either. When the new season eventually gets under way we will be in uncharted territory, an unfamiliar world where anything seems possible, and not just because Lionel Messi has served notice on Barcelona or Everton have got Carlo Ancelotti to go through his contact book either.
If it serves a purpose at all, the point of the Community Shield game is to warn cricket fans, holidaymakers abroad and youngsters contemplating a return to school that summer is drawing to a close and football is about to stake its annual claim on the nation’s attention. In normal circumstances, even in international tournament years, football will usually have been away for long enough for people to start to miss it. A Community Shield game that arrives less than a week after a Champions League final and two weeks before the actual start of the domestic season is a very strange thing, but then we are living in strange times. Just ask cricket fans, holidaymakers abroad or youngsters contemplating a return to school.
Add in the facts that Wembley will be empty, that next week sees an international break and that the transfer window will not close until 5 October at the earliest, and you have an almost surreal start to a football season. It’s back, but not as we want to know it. The rather disappointing denouement of the Champions League only highlighted the feeling that now the novelty of seeing games played behind closed doors has worn off, the return of a nation to its television sets is not the sort of cheer-up we need or expect at this time of year.
It could be argued that any form of football is better than nothing, and it probably is, though football played in a sterile environment is bland and characterless. In retrospect all the games played in this phoney-war period are going to look the same. Timeless, and not in a good way. Future generations may be able to date the action by close scrutiny of players’ hairstyles or body decoration, but no one will be able to detect the passing of the seasons as crowds move from shirtsleeves to overcoats and back again.
When Leeds make their return to the top flight after 16 years there will only be cardboard cutouts to witness it, which is a shame when you think of the sun-dappled early season optimism that greeted Fabrizio Ravanelli when he scored a hat-trick on his Middlesbrough debut, or for that matter the opening-day dejection of West Ham supporters a year ago when Manchester City deepened the frown lines on Manuel Pellegrini’s resigned expression by handing out a 5-0 walloping. Footage of such events still looks great years afterwards (unless you are a West Ham fan) because you can feel the opening-day fervour coming through from the crowd.
Fervour is what was missing from the last stages of the Champions League and it will be just as sorely missed when the new domestic season gets under way. Please don’t write in; obviously there are more pressing matters in the world to worry about at the moment but this is a football article. The general assumption as the new season comes into view seems to be that once supporters are let back into grounds – whenever that might be – normal service will be resumed and the game will carry on as if nothing had ever happened.
That in turn assumes fervour can be turned on and off like a tap, and that modern professional football is so robust an edifice that not even a year like 2020 can put a dent in it. We have seen enough from the lower divisions to suspect that this may not be the case everywhere, and though the Premier League likes to believe it is immune to pretty much everything, it is possible that it may take longer than a single season to fully readjust. Will football never be the same again, or will it soon be exactly the same again? The 2020-21 season should tell us; the Community Shield probably won’t.
from Football | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3jivChq
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