The beautiful game that just won’t go away

The good people of Leicester have barely had a chance to put the Champagne bottles out for recycling yet, like a party guest arriving unfashionably early, the Premier League season comes along again. Like a needy and insistent child tugging at our sleeves, the ‘richest league in the world’ wants our full and undivided attention, even though the Olympics have just got going.

I remember being in a pub watching the thrilling climax to the fourth Ashes Test at Trent Bridge in 2005, as England took a big step towards regaining the urn held by Australia for almost 20 years.

At the height of the nail-biting England run chase, a group of men came in and asked – albeit nicely – if the TV channel could be changed so they could watch, I think, Middlesborough v Charlton Athletic.

A compromise was reached and they found a smaller telly elsewhere in the bar. But this seemed like football’s way of reminding you it’s always there, even when you’re more interested in something else.

Aside from this intrusion, some of us are still more than a bit miffed that the Premier League’s English ‘stars’, who are now being portrayed as unconquerable heroes in pre-season promotional footage, were unable to pull one back against Iceland little over a month ago.

Everyone seems to forget the abject failure of our national team once the club season kicks off. The likes of Joe Hart and Wayne Rooney are suddenly treated as titans of the game, as opposed to international flops who only look good when they’re surrounded by superior foreign team-mates.

At least Head & Shoulders might finally see sense and drop Hart from its shampoo adverts, in the same way the England goalkeeper dropped so many shots that came his way in Euro 2016.