Kane vs Kiwis at Club World Cup, Man Utd in Asia and Bournemouth vs Everton in New Jersey… football must never rest

The Sun

2 days ago

IN the wee small hours of Sunday at the Allianz Arena in Munich, Paris Saint-Germain's players were celebrating the greatest achievement of their lives.
They had ended the 14-year quest of their Qatari overlords to win the Champions League, having inflicted on Inter Milan the most comprehensive humping in the history of European Cup finals.
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But if Luis Enrique and his side had wanted to put their feet up and bask in this ultimate glory, then they were sadly mistaken.
Almost immediately after their 5-0 win, Enrique and his stars would be peppered with questions about their prospects at the Club World Cup — a 32-team, month-long tournament designed to carpet-bomb TV schedules with even more football, starting on Sunday week.
Does the Club World Cup now represent ultimate glory, rather than the Champions League?
Is that, in the words of Finchy in The Office, 'the real quiz'?
Because football — even in the odd-numbered summers which used to give us a brief respite from the thing — must never, ever rest.
And so next week, PSG will go to America, where they will play the Urawa Red Diamonds, The Last Shadow Puppets and the Seattle Sounders — only one of which is really the name of an English band.
And on Sunday week, Bayern Munich will play Auckland City in Cincinnati.
And they WILL play.
And there is nothing we can do to stop them playing. Even though we already know Bayern Munich are significantly better than Auckland City.
And Harry Kane will play. Even though his body is creaking.
Even though he hasn't had a proper rest in years. Even though he surely can't think of anything worse than having to play Auckland City.
Because Fifa are offering $1BILLION in prize money.
And two days later, you can watch in HD as Ulsan HD of South Korea play Mamelodi Sundowns, who are possibly an indie band who have an afternoon slot on Glastonbury's Pyramid Stage, or might be a football team from Pretoria in South Africa
Because in football there must be no sundown. Only the Mamelodi Sundowns.
And Manchester City and Chelsea will be there too, due to some convoluted Uefa qualification system which it's best not to ask about.
And Inter Miami will be there — not because of any system but because they employ Lionel Messi, who turns 38 this month and must be tired but must never, ever rest.
And the whole thing will go on for every bit as long as an actual World Cup, with countries, used to go on for.
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Although not as long as next year's actual World Cup, which will have 48 nations and 104 matches in it and will go on for even longer.
Oh and there will still be a third-place play-off.
Because what else would we do with ourselves on Saturday July 18, 2026, if we couldn't watch another game of football between two utterly deflated, exhausted teams?
Manchester United didn't qualify for the Club World Cup.
But that doesn't matter because, after the worst season in their modern history, United's players travelled 14,000 miles to play post-season friendlies in Kuala Lumpur and Hong Kong so that the club could fulfil £10million worth of sponsorship commitments.
And yes 'net zero' is supposed to be an environmental policy rather than United's goalscoring output against the ASEAN All-Stars. During the half-time interval of that 1-0 defeat in Malaysia, Andre Onana, Harry Maguire and Diogo Dalot were substituted so they could board a private jet to Mumbai to promote Apollo tyres.
Because people in Mumbai will choose Apollo tyres if an error-prone Cameroonian goalkeeper tells them to.
And Michelin and Bridgestone and Pirelli won't get a look in, just so long as Dalot presses home Apollo's core messages, which are 'Going The Distance' and 'Conquer Every Road'.
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While Maguire was flying to India, to tell people that 'the journey is as important as the destination', Amad Diallo was still in Malaysia, where he was giving the middle finger to a fan who had apparently abused his mother.
And then issuing a social-media apology, in which he said he didn't actually regret giving the finger.
Because it isn't enough that Amad's mother is abused during the football season.
She needs to be abused during the close season as well.
And her son needs to retaliate.
Because there needs to be online content and, if the internet never sleeps, then why should football sleep, along with its content-creating by-product, the abuse of really tired footballers?
Last year, Tottenham and Newcastle made a 21,000-mile round trip to Melbourne to play each other, six weeks after they had previously done so. And the Toon won on penalties.
But is that really enough, when these footballers travelled in first-class luxury and stayed in excellent hotels?
The BBC's Race Across The World is an extraordinarily successful TV show because contestants must travel on overnight buses and then muck out animals to raise extra cash.
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Why shouldn't footballers do the same on post-season and pre-season tours? Wouldn't that provide better content?
This Saturday, England will play a competitive match against Andorra, which won't be competitive.
And next Tuesday, England will play Senegal, when they won't really be England because so many of their players will be heading to the Club World Cup.
But it's not as if we'd have to wait long for football without this new thing.
Next month, there will be a North London Derby in Hong Kong and Bournemouth will play Everton at New Jersey's MetLife Stadium, the venue for next summer's World Cup final.
Because why wouldn't we want to watch Bournemouth play Everton in July — even if, when the fixtures come out in a fortnight, we might find out that they are playing each other in August?
The thing is, Bournemouth versus Everton has been far too parochial until now.
When Bournemouth are at home, only 11,000 people get in to watch it.
What about the blue-collar workers of New Jersey, the people Bruce Springsteen writes ballads about?
Don't they deserve their fix of Bournemouth versus Everton, instead of just shotgun, teenage weddings and dreaming about escaping from small towns on motorbikes, kind of stuff?
And the answer is, yes, they do deserve Bournemouth versus Everton. Just like you deserve Red Bull Salzburg, the second best team in Austria, versus CF Pachuca, the eighth best team in Mexico.
That one's on Wednesday June 18 at 11pm. Followed by Al-Ain versus Juventus at 2am.
Eyes down, look in. We'll sleep when we're dead.
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