The Community Shield marks beginnings and ends. Here come nine months of Premier League hopes and fears. Even if the eventual fate awaiting a team can become crystal clear as early as the opening weekend, there can be no backward glances. This means more, as the modern cliche goes. Many are happy to live by those words.
Regrettably, club football’s return also means the sun setting on a brilliant summer of sport, the closing of an ever-narrower window. Only the truly afflicted are not glad of the respite. The close season, as it was previously termed, lowers the cortisol, regulates the serotonin levels until it’s time to go again. The Club World Cup was not too much of a diversion, despite Gianni Infantino’s best efforts and corralling of Donald Trump, a month of unlovable fare that desperately searched for authenticity via its blaring, high-contrast cocktail of celebrity and Saudi Arabian money.
England’s modern-classic 25-day Test series with India, a British & Irish Lions rugby union tour to restore faith in the tradition, the emotions of Rory McIlroy’s Royal Portrush homecoming at the Open, Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz playing out two thrilling grand slam tennis finals, both male and female versions of the Tour de France and, most of all, the rollercoaster ride the Lionesses took England on to defend their Euros crown. All have offered welcome relief from the Premier League’s self-important yet irresistible charms.
Each featured sport played at ultra-competitive levels, with plenty of needle around. England’s fielders attempted to distract their opponents with a circular set of sledges that often recalled the incantations from the Wicker Man. Tadej Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard eyed each other’s moves in the high mountains in predatory fashion, each trying to bury the other, but by Paris their admiration for each other was also made plain. Similar respect filled the air in the clinches shared between teams after India levelled at the Oval, and in Sydney as Australia signed off with a deserved consolation victory.
The spirit of cricket endures. This summer South Africa’s captain, Wiaan Mulder, declared his team’s innings with him on 367 not out against Zimbabwe, 33 short of the highest Test score, reasoning that “Brian Lara keeping that record is exactly the way it should be”, and showing clemency to a redeveloping opponent.
Where Wisden quoted a number of responses bemoaning “woke nonsense” and the like, Mulder’s gesture spoke to sportsmanship, legacy and a respect for his sport’s purity. The following weekend, the final of Infantino’s plaything ended in an on-pitch skirmish between Chelsea and Paris Saint-Germain players and Trump gatecrashing the celebrations.
So back into the football void we go, where “Respect” is a long-forgotten Football Association campaign, where video assistant referees mean the on-pitch official’s decision is less than final, where fans now pore over rivals’ published accounts in search of profitability and sustainability breaches. Such are the terms of engagement of the Premier League.
As a less modern cliche has it, Sunday’s the meeting of Liverpool and Crystal Palace is a traditional curtain-raiser, while also drawing the curtain on everything else. Though certain managers, Pep Guardiola among them, count it as a major trophy, it retains a status of glorified friendly, though it has often reflected the cynicism of the season ahead.
Its most famous match, when it was the Charity Shield, remains the first staging at Wembley in 1974, Liverpool’s Kevin Keegan and Leeds’ Billy Bremner dismissed for throwing punches. Leeds’ Johnny Giles has admitted his role as Keegan’s provocateur, saying in 2020: “He was in a bit of a temper … I actually did hit him.” The two miscreants, but not Giles, were banned for 11 matches each, among their chief offences being the ungentlemanly discarding of shirts as they left the field, these days common practice for the dismissed.
after newsletter promotion
More recently, in the old Wembley’s last staging of the event, in 2000, Manchester United’s Roy Keane was sent off for a brutal studs-up clatter of Gustavo Poyet, reviving a personal feud begun in the same fixture three years earlier. Another serious casting of shade was at Villa Park in August 2012, Wembley in use for the London Olympics. London’s 16 days as the centre of the sporting universe, with its Super Saturday, a host rapt by the prospect of Team GB winning medals in even the most obscure sports, had reached its closing Sunday. Mo Farah had won double gold the previous night.
Enter Chelsea and Manchester City, whose grasping of the spirit of London 2012, sportsmanship bringing all together, was to kick blessed lumps from each other, the referee Kevin Friend all but losing control, Chelsea’s Branislav Ivanovic dismissed for a studs-up challenge on his Serbian compatriot Aleksandar Kolarov’s shin. Eight yellow cards were waved. Three years later, back at Wembley, Arsène Wenger and José Mourinho shunned each other in theatrical fashion rather than shake hands.
Scenes you won’t want to see … but actually really want to see? That Premier League football is played at the edge of sanity and acceptability is a leading reason why it holds the attention through the dark winter it beckons.
