JUNE 28 — Having spent the last couple of weeks lazing on the beaches of Dubai and the Caribbean, Premier League footballers are now preparing to return to work for the dreaded prospect of pre-season training, which commences for most clubs at the beginning of July.
It feels like football has never been away — the Champions League final between Barcelona and Manchester United took place only just a month ago — but already one Premier League team, Fulham, are preparing for their first competitive fixture of the season as they host NSI Runavik from the Faroe Islands in the preliminary round of the Europa League on Thursday.
It hasn't always been this way. Travel back to the year of my birth, 1973, for instance, when Liverpool won the last of their titles under the management of Bill Shankly.
In that year, the Reds played their concluding league game on Saturday, April 28 (a 0-0 home draw against Leicester) and didn't begin the new season until Saturday, August 25 (a 1-0 home win against Stoke). That's a gap of four full months between the end of one league season and the start of the next one.
By contrast, this year Kenny Dalglish's side brought their Premier League season to an end with a 1-0 defeat at Aston Villa on Sunday, May 22 and are scheduled to kick off the new campaign at home to Sunderland on Saturday, August 13. That's less than three months after the previous season concluded, and a break no less than five weeks shorter than their predecessors in 1973.
Football seasons really are finishing later and starting earlier than ever before, and that effect is not just confined to competitive fixtures; over the course of the last few years, pre-season has effectively become an extension of the regular season, with every training session and warm-up game eagerly devoured by hungry supporters and media.
Pre-season friendly fixtures used to be sparsely attended, low-key affairs that received very little media coverage and barely entered the consciousness of most supporters. The only pre-season game that occasionally attracted any interest was the Charity Shield, with all other games relegated to minor references in local newspapers.
Now, Liverpool are preparing to embark upon a 10-day tour of Asia where they will play reasonably competitive fixtures in front of sell-out crowds and global television audiences in China (Guangzhou) and Kuala Lumpur, before returning to Europe to face Valerenga in Norway and then hosting major Spanish club Valencia at Anfield.
The contrast between 1973 and 2011 is by no means exclusive to football, as most other mainstream sports have experienced the same thing. International cricketers, for example, are now forced to endure a seemingly endless procession of test matches and one-day internationals, while the desire of club owners to extend the season is one of the most significant factors behind the current "lock out" in American Football's NFL.
As with most changes wrought upon professional sport in the last couple of decades, the elongation of the season and the heightened profile of previously peripheral pre-season activities have been overwhelmingly driven by one key factor: television.
Like it or not, the main function of professional sport in contemporary culture is to satisfy the demands of 24-hour television, which takes great delight in sport's unmatchable ability to fill schedules, attract viewers and lure advertisers but most certainly does not appreciate lengthy gaps between the end of one season and the start of the next.
Sky Sports, ESPN, Fox and Co are simply not prepared to accept a 1973-style break of four months without Premier League football. They spend billions of dollars on procuring the broadcast rights for their most popular products, and in return they expect them to become pretty much year-round spectacles.
And so the end of one season is pushed further and further into May, with the start of the next pulled back ever closer towards the start of August, and a steady diet of hyped-up, glamorous friendlies and an assortment of international tournaments (youth age groups, women, etc) is seamlessly slotted in to fill the remaining two months.
Of course, the broadcasters are only keen to establish such a state of affairs because it's what they believe their viewers want, and the large crowds and fevered discussion amongst supporters that now accompany pre-season activities suggest they are right.
No doubt it's all part of our modern "fast-food" psyche. In days gone by, we were prepared to exercise patience (remember patience? People sometimes used to be patient, I've heard it said) and calmly wait for their next fix. These days, in the world of broadband Internet access, mobile phones, Twitter, Facebook, satellite TV and microwave meals, we want everything now, now, now! Or preferably five minutes ago.
That includes our football. Can you imagine the Premier League and its clubs being put to one side at the end of April and not re-emerging until the end of August? Impossible; that's not how we live anymore. And so our TV networks await, with feverish excitement, the next update on Steven Gerrard's groin injury.
* The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the columnist.
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The Malaysian Insider :: Sports
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