Madness all the extra International games
It's madness us complaining about them every year. You know it's going to happen, you know it's not going to change, so you just let them get on with it.
When these games are played during the season, we complain that they should be played in a big block at the end of the season instead. Now we have them played in a big block at the end of the season as we demanded, the new complaint is there is too much football at this time of year. We know how June is, and always has been, even more so in a WC year. Anyone who doesn't fancy it, can just quit representing his country, because he wants his full siesta in the sunshine every summer. Problem solved.
I have always had very little tolerance of fatigue regarding footballers. Even more so when live play barely stretches to an hour in the average game. When I hear or see medics trying to save lives every day, throughout their 12 hour daily shift, for multiple amount more stress and a fraction of the wages, I've even less sympathy for footballers bawling in the media about being run into the ground. This is your career, not a part time hobby. You're paid to play games. So get out there and play them. I would love to be paid 1mn quid per month and have only 3 weeks off a year in my job for the privilege, and I'm sure many more would as well.
I genuinely haven't worked up enough interest in the Nations League to even find out what it is yet - ie what the format is and what it is supposed to be for. Seemed unnecessary and confusing when it first appeared, and I've never got past that with it.
I'm not going to go into the forensics of it here, but this is something like the League Cup, only at international level. The biggest nations that qualify for every finals are not that interested and don't really need to be, they use their groups as a warm up campaign for bigger fish to fry later. Everyone else takes it more seriously as seedings and playoff places are at stake. Russia were expelled obviously, but Belarussia were not.
France have already lost their title, in case anyone noticed, while England have used it as a chance to experiment with players, tactics, and formations at the end of the league season, which is what they should do. So I wouldn't be taking their results so far very seriously, or as seriously as their media seem to be anyway.
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