England: Arsenal ‘ready to go’ after brief off-season

The new English soccer season is starting in the same month the last one finished.

For Arsenal, in particular, the turnaround has been rapid.

In the final domestic match of the pandemic-prolonged 201920 campaign, Arsenal won the FA Cup by beating Chelsea 2-1 at an empty Wembley Stadium on Aug. 1.

And it's at the national stadium — still without spectators — where Arsenal's players return only four weeks later to play Liverpool in the Community Shield, the traditional curtainraiser of the season between the winners of the Premier League and FA Cup.

“We are ready to go,” Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta said. “We have no choice.”

Saying it is “not an ideal moment to play this final” is quite the understatement by Arteta, who reported Thursday that Arsenal has had two training sessions so far in what he called a “mini pre-season.”

For the Spanish coach, it is just another example of how the Premier League is heading into the unknown in an upcoming season that has being squeezed by a month because of the extension of last season following the coronavirus outbreak.

Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp said on Friday that he ideally would have liked six weeks to prepare for the new season. Instead, it is a fourweek pre-season for the English champions that is still getting interrupted by an international break for Nations League qualifiers.

“I'll be very surprised if this is the best game we'll play this season,” Klopp said.

“Nobody is moaning,” he added in reference to the global situation regarding the pandemic, “because we're just happy we can play at all.”