Ding dong! Football’s home! The full Premier League calendar has begun; tonight, Tottenham Hotspur v Manchester United will be consuming your full attention, and in an unprecedented move for the Premier League, at 6pm Norwich City v Southampton will be on a free-to-air channel (Pick). It’s expected to have record viewing figures.
I’ve missed football enormously. It is, as the saying goes, the most important of the least important things in life, a distractingly narcissistic overgrown children’s game that I adore. The Prime Minister thinks, too, that it will be a “much-needed boost” to morale. Hmm. The nation might need some convincing (weirdly, the PM’s word doesn’t seem to be sufficient). Half the population, as per YouGov polling, believe it’s too soon for all this. It’s not safe, they think. Even though stadiums are empty, filled with artificial crowd noise, illicit groups will gather to watch their teams. Also, it’s been nice talking to our partners about something besides football for once.
But to the wary I offer some small reassurances. One, the multi-billion pound Premier League franchise has put together one of the most biosecure environments in the world — athletes are being tested and shielded rigorously. Two, the game has returned not with a bang but with a whimper in a titanic scoreless draw played out by Aston Villa and Sheffield United on Wednesday (the League had an ad hoc spare few games to get out of the way first). New habits will stick. If crowds are congregating, it’ll be for more tantalising offers. Three, the return of football is good, actually. It may feel uncanny but so does everything in this new, nuanced normal.
Hard lockdown, in hindsight, was the easy bit: there were rules most of us played by. It’s this half-awake lockdown lite that is proving tricky. Here, football can help society — and it already has.
I’ve missed football enormously. It is the most important of the least important things in life
Marcus Rashford, the Manchester United striker, forced the Government into a U-turn over free school meals . And Manchester City’s Raheem Sterling appeared on Newsnight to campaign for anti-racism. This is the kind of messaging that cuts through. Sterling was one of 22 players who took the knee during the first minute of the Manchester City v Arsenal game on Wednesday night, then walloped in a volley to start a 3-0 rout. Action and deed.
Like Plato’s allegory of the cave, we are watching shadow lives play out for now, football hobbyists being no exception. Light is coming. We are just starting to blink back towards it.
