International break is a strange relief in such a relentless season

Sign up to the Independent's betting newsletter for the latest tips and offers

Sign up to the Independent's betting newsletter

Please enter a valid email address

Please enter a valid email address

SIGN UP

I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice

During this interminable odyssey of a season, when football has laid siege to what feels like every waking minute of our lives, there have admittedly been times when it’s been a little like watching paint dry. Not so much that it’s been particularly boring - after all, a goalless draw between Newcastle and West Brom could curdle the blood of cavemen - but that it’s been so relentless; layers and layers of fixtures spread thinly until the recent past is completely obscured, like graffiti on a London underpass. 

At first, the commitment to televise every Premier League match this season was a glorious distraction, a pool of content to constantly drown ourselves in. But the trouble is when fixtures span 16 successive days - as they did up until Monday - and the nights are merely a stopgap until the next VAR controversy, you realise that every now and again it’d be rather nice to breathe. That no matter how much we love football, Jose Mourinho’s cycles of surly self-destruction can be repetitive to the point of suffocating. 

It takes the most ardent of football fans, the type with a stash of programmes fit to rival a compulsive hoarder, to truly crave an international break. At the best of times, World Cup qualifiers are the stage for something new: the blooding of young prospects or an overdue, sentimental outing for those who’ve hacked away on the fringes. But the vast majority are warm-ups that move with all the speed of an Arctic glacier. The ritual slaughter of San Marino’s semi-professionals, a rite bestowed onto England this Thursday, or Gibraltar, captained by a 38-year-old customs officer, defending the rock against Norway’s Erling Haaland, a striker who could chew limestone like a stick of gum. 

Except, this time, the international break isn’t a guillotine to continuity, but a sweet relief. The cymbal-banging monkey that is the Premier League is on pause. England 5-0 San Marino may not offer any new footballing insights, but it will allow everyone, and not least the players themselves, the chance to reflect and refresh after an avalanche of games, goals and kilometres. 

A season that was born playing catch-up has spent the last seven months racing towards the finish line. Under those circumstances, against the anxious and exhausting backdrop of the pandemic, the plots have inevitably begun to peter out. Manchester City are so far ahead of United that you’d require a telescope rather than a taxi to bridge the gap. At the opposite end, Sheffield United and West Brom have long resigned to mediocre relegation. Only in the battle for top-four, and Fulham’s flailing for survival against Newcastle’s attempts to dig their own grave, is there still something to be won and lost.

Read more

Rather than being lightning rods for conversation, the pattern of injuries, the outrage over handballs, schedules, and general hot air, not to mention the undertaker’s warnings of Peter Walton, have whirred into one constant buzz. They’re the pillars of football’s undying debates but, on such a fierce auto-loop, it’s become a bit like tinnitus. 

There’s a lesson in there: about football’s endless churn and the limits to our appetite for entertainment; about how the sanctity of a traditional weekend has been pillaged for a constant fix, and where this will yet lead as the likes of Fifa and Uefa plot with a greed that shows no sign of abating. But then, in a world still gripped by a barely unclenching first, it’s hardly surprising that a discussion that would have once endured over four cans of cheap lager now induces a feeling of drowsiness. Perhaps, we’re just all a little hungover. And while this is no good time to start going sober, the international break does offer the chance to quickly rinse out our glasses. 

So for almost two weeks, embrace the tremors as heavyweights like Moldova and the Faroe Islands collide. Froth with discontent over Gareth Southgate’s squad, right up until kick-off, when you realise the U18s would have had the teenage firepower to defeat a valiant but helpless San Marino. Watch in horrified awe as Haaland, football’s insatiable Frankenstein devours a small nation and spits it back out in chunks. And then, by the time the Premier League returns for its home straight, with a great lungful of air, we can immerse ourselves again.