The new football season

 The new football season.

There used to be a time when the new football season in both England and Scotland was warmly anticipated rather like a picnic in the countryside or a day at the seaside or some luxurious holiday  around a hotel swimming pool. Perhaps a lazy beachside retreat next to a turquoise coloured sea would set you up very nicely for the new football season in August. It was timed to perfection rather like a stopwatch. 

For fans who supported teams in the lower divisions, there would be an ever present dread and foreboding, a sense that there was no point in hoping for anything apart perhaps from a decent League or FA Cup run. In the Premier League, though, the algorithms and statistical data would mean something entirely different. You somehow knew that the season would be accompanied by loftier standards and expectations. There remained a real possibility that you might but probably not win any conceivable silverware but there was nothing new about that.

So here we are at the beginning of August and the new club kits are being prepared, washed and cleaned thoroughly. Both the home and away shirts look in pristine condition, preparations are under way for the great pilgrimage to every Premier League, Championship, League One and Two club and dad will iron out the creases of those retro shirts that occasionally date back to when Kevin Keegan or Clyde Best were but teenagers.

But every season, football becomes more and more trapped in a dizzying merry go round of financial madness and rampant materialism, a billion pound operation that becomes so money crazed, greedy and acquisitive with every passing year that you can hardly bear witness to this moral abomination. For year on and year we look aghast at a transfer window so obsessed with its million pound addiction that you somehow wish a rational speaking figure would just get hold of the game and shake it to its senses. 

And therein lies the enduring dilemma. In the old days when football was played against a sensible backdrop of pounds, shillings, tanners and old sixpences, football was pure, unblemished and grounded. It was a game, above all, free from corruption, endless vanity projects and players who were only worried by the size of their next country mansion and those gravelled driveways groaning with the latest Jaguar or Ferrari model. 

Of course, the traditionalists can vividly recall the decade which completely lost its wherewithal, its ability to look no further than the price of footballers, their marketable potential and maybe their capacity to perform in some outlandish reality TV show. They long for the days when Tom Finney, the Preston plumber, simply played football for fun and pleasure rather than the extra digit on his wage packet  which became as much an anachronism as the tram, trolley bus or the rationing of butter after the Second World War.

Still, although there's only a fortnight to go before the much reviled and despised referee blows his first kick off whistle of the season, there is much to look forward to despite the crass expenditure of wildly inflated footballers who still believe that they're genuinely misunderstood. But then you look at the game's outside influences, the dubious chairmen and those spivs whose only objective is to make a quick buck and then make as much money out of the deal as seems humanly possible. It is hard to look beyond football's darker boundaries since this seems so disreputable and unpleasant. 

And yet in two weeks time Premier League champions Liverpool will open their defence of their title with hopes shining in abundance and the usual suspects such as Arsenal, Aston Villa, Manchester City and Chelsea snapping at Liverpool's heels. Next week, FA Cup winners Crystal Palace meet Premier League champions Liverpool in the Community Shield in the customary curtain raiser to the football season.

Even now you can visualise the yearly build up to the start of the season. Groundsmen and women will be painting fresh coats of white onto new touchlines, goal-lines, nets will be lovingly installed on opposite sides of the ground and vast terraces swept and cleaned rigorously. Behind the scenes, legions of fans will be dusting down their cashless cards and phones where tickets of the day will be sold via a QR code or the yearly guarantee of the conventional season ticket. 

It all seems a far cry from the days when you marched confidently into the South Bank at West Ham United and then passed what seemed like a full paddock of horses with stern looking policemen gripping tightly onto their reins. The opening day of a new football season was like the beginning of a school term since in many ways you didn't quite know what to expect. You were familiar with old acquaintances but hadn't a clue how your team would fare throughout the season. 

You then squeezed your way through creaking, rusting and decaying turnstiles and then wandered out onto the hugely populated terraces and seats. At first you were awe stricken at the sheer size and volume of the ground even though it was still empty. Still, you stood there stoically on that famous day in the middle of August surrounded by vocal and vociferous kids with scarves amusingly tied around their waist. Some were still wearing the Adidas T-shirts of 1970s vintage while others were weighed down with several burgers and hotdogs dripping profusely with tomato ketchup.

You now took out the much cherished footballing literature of the match programme. Way back in the distant past, football match programmes consisted of a couple of A4 size pieces of paper with just a couple of notices for future matches and the obligatory advertising of local timber merchants or tyre companies. But your programme was your passport into a world of fantasy and imagination. Perhaps 90 minutes of sheer escapism would provide the most delightful of all distractions and, quite possibly, a victory for your team if they were in the right mood on the day. 

From late summer and right through winter, your feet would be constantly subjected to the ever changing climates. Through sun, rain, wind and snow, you simply didn't care because it was just good to be alive and still is of course. You were watching your team and who cared if they were thrashed 5-0 on a Saturday afternoon since this was the rich tapestry of life. You could read your team's body language from the kick off. Of course every team who visited West Ham's old Upton Park ground would lick their lips and salivate at the home's team's reckless and cavalier attacking style. West Ham were simply easy to beat, fallible and gullible, vulnerable and fragile when their defence was frequently broken into with consummate ease. 

But here we are at the beginning of August and the summertime revelries will soon be replaced by an autumnal cavalcade of brown leaved colours, the endless family picnics in parks now a distant memory, the outdoor pop concerts a barely audible guitar and family parties joyous gatherings that once gravitated into the garden before going back into the kitchen for a while. The ducks and geese will fly back over well cultivated fields and thousands of residential rooftops before soaring over beautifully medieval churches and peacefully idyllic panoramas. It is still very much  a microcosm of your life because it only occupies a small place in your weekly itinerary.  

Football will always have its natural place in the grander scheme of things and will always have the most important value and currency. It is of course obscenely expensive and unbearably repetitive at times since the Beautiful Game is virtually a seven day sporting event. Premier League games are now spread out over an entire weekend and the rest of the fixture schedule is a random manifestation, matches taking place on both Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and, now ludicrously on Thursdays.

Still, football fans really wouldn't have it any other way because it's in their bloodstream, their natural conditioning, their lifestyle and mentality, the way they organise their lives throughout the weeks. So, come on everybody, let's celebrate life and usher in the new football season. We would never have it any other way. Step aboard the fluctuating roller coaster of ups and downs that is the football season. It's football and we'll be there for them at every possible moment. You may be sure we will.