The two words that send shivers down the spine of every football fan remain “international break”. Whether you’re top of the league or rock bottom there’s not a single football fan alive that prefers international football to watching their beloved team on a weekly basis.
David Moyes was probably the only man looking forward to the two week break given his Sunderland side look short on confidence. Players discontent of the international break is evident with so many players pulling out of their national team squad’s through ‘injury’.
The England fiasco surrounding Sam Allardyce has left a dark cloud over the England national team with almost every supporter counting down the days until their club side return to first-team action.
It’s times like this we all wished we supported a lower league side and could still visit our local ground to watch our team, however sometimes that causes more pain than it’s worth.
Ahead of the much anticipated international break, here are five things more interesting than these two weeks of hell.
Listening to a Liverpool fan discuss the club’s history
We all know a Liverpool fan who likes to mention the club’s impressive historical success. Five European trophies, nineteen league titles and so on and so forth.
To be honest, there’s not many who are fond of the two week break we are forced to endure, whilst the national press build up England’s chances at the next major tournament because they beat San Marino 4-0.
However, listening to a Liverpool fan discuss how great the 70’s and 80’s is certainly a damn-sight better than watching England players attempt a passionate performance against a team ranked 40 places below them in the world rankings.
Watching a Mark Hughes press conference
You will have to search long and hard to find a manager who bores you more than Mark Hughes.
The Stoke City manager continuously provides us with some of the most plain, dull and least entertaining press conferences, media interviews and post match thoughts we’ve ever heard.
England may have the most unexciting national team in world football currently, but sitting down on Sunday evening to watch all of Sparky’s interviews would be surely more exciting than watching Wayne Rooney wander around a Wembley pitch for 90 minutes pretending he wants to be there.
Manuel Pellegrini’s leaving speech
The Chilean manager vacated his role as Manchester City manager at the end of last season. His farewell game against Arsenal brought a large number of criticism towards the City faithful who left the stadium before Pellegrini could give his farewell speech to the club.
Whether you believe it was right or wrong, Pellegrini was the manager of a team that showed no care for the fans in his final season and regularly gave the impression he didn’t care whatsoever.
Pellegrini may not have excited many people but surely his leaving speech would be a lot more exciting than watching England next week under Gareth Southgate.
Scottish football
It’s honestly the dullest, boring, lowest standard of football currently on our TVs at the moment. People state the Bundesliga or Ligue 1 is a “one team league” however it couldn’t be any further from the truth.
Celtic dominate Scottish football and are certainly a special football club however they do reside in a dire league. Celtic have underachieved in the past few seasons which has made the other teams look even better.
Nonetheless, Scottish football is bad but a two week international break is abysmal. I’d tune into the SPL on a weekly basis if it meant no international football during the mid season anymore.
Michael Owen’s commentary
An absolutely superb striker, Michael Owen became another former player who made the leap into the media circle. However unlike Trevor Sinclair, Gary Lineker and Matt Le Tissier, Owen has not gained much praise from supporters due to his outstandingly poor commentary on BT Sport last season.
The man who famously said “footballers these days often have to use their feet” to go along with his infamous “he’s elbowed him in the head but there’s nothing in it for me” quote bores every one of us.
Sitting down and spending an evening listening to Michael’s in-depth knowledge of the beautiful game may just edge having wait around for our teams to return to Premier League action, though.
