‘So we have ahead of us a period of nothingness as we return to our clubs and prepare to start again’

SO it ends today, the last summer World Cup for eight years — with the grotesque experiment in Qatar due to take place around Christmas 2022, we will be losing at least one of the essential elements of a World Cup, the fact that it gives us football at a time of year when otherwise there would be none.

Since we always have plenty of football around Christmas anyway, for the first time the grand old tournament will feel more like it is being squeezed into the normal schedule, rather than standing alone majestically during the hellish wastelands of June and July.

We have had forewarnings of the dark days ahead, during the “rest days” of Russia 2018: first it was one day, then two days, then three days — and now we are looking at tomorrow, the rest day that will last forever. Or at least for a month, until the middle of August when the illustrious protagonists of the tournament are back at their clubs, many of them in the English Premier League.

It is still a month, and that will not be easy, after the month that we have had.

There were moments in the days since the semifinals, when you’d nearly be happy to be watching a bit of a Rugby World Cup just to kill the empty hours. Though of course the rugby guys insist on having their little “world cup” at a time of year when it is not needed at all.

The British government helped us out somewhat last Monday, when they went on another binge of self-destruction which kept us vaguely amused for a few hours. But you can’t be expecting that kind of crude light entertainment to give you the sustenance you need in the long term.

There are people who live on that stuff all the time, and you only have to look into their eyes, to see the badness of it.

So we have ahead of us a period of nothingness as we return to our clubs and prepare to start again, with the promise that soon the international football which has been captivating us will seem like a horrible imposition, a maddening interruption to the regular football season.

Yes, there is perhaps a balance in the way that the universe is organised — whereby we can view a World Cup as a kind of a holiday from “normal” football, which in turn renews itself again in such a way that soon we are resenting deeply the chore of having to watch the Republic playing Moldova in a friendly in the middle of October.

And while Russia 2018 shows us what life should be like all the time, perhaps we would eventually get bored if it was actually happening all the time?

You’ll note that I put a question mark after that, because it is just a theory.

So we must accept that there is indeed this universal balance at work, this yin and this yang, though that will not be easy when we wake up tomorrow and realise that there’s nothing on for the rest of the day except... life.