Good morning and a happy weekend! The sun is shining, the birds are chirping, and my daughter just about allowed me to get enough sleep for me to hopefully commit the metaphorical pen to paper this morning.
Let’s see if I can write down anything that actually makes sense.
That annoying humming you can hear in the background is the slow approach of the inaugural FIFA Club World Death Star, featuring villains such as Manchester City, Chelsea, Paris Saint-Germain, Real Madrid and Bayern Munich. Hooray for football and the world’s game bringing people together!
The tournament kicks off tonight (1am UK) with the answer to the question we’ve all been asking for years: have Inter Miami got what it takes to beat Al-Ahly in a half empty stadium in the humid Floridian summer?
More sincerely, I’m thrilled Arsenal aren’t there this summer. The tournament is a clear money grab, it lacks any kind of prestige no matter how many times Gianni Infantino is pictured in the Oval Office, and it takes some doing for football to plonk something in the middle of the calendar without a record low level of consideration for players, for fans, for locals, and for literally anyone else who has ever even contemplated sitting down to watch a game. Finally, something to bring us all together.
The backdrop in America right now is about as dystopian as it gets, with senators being handcuffed, nobody safe to use a bathroom without risking being accused of being in the wrong one, and anyone who isn’t quite white enough wondering whether they might be thrown into the back of a van, never to be seen again.
I suppose it’s a perfect place for FIFA to do their thing, they’ve turned turning a blind eye and fleecing fans along the way into an art. Stick to what you know!
On a sporting level, I do wonder if there’s an advantage to be had for Arsenal by not being involved. Sure, there’s no chance of a massive windfall like there is for those competing, but we’ve just come off the back of a season that was enormously disrupted by injuries. Those injuries were almost exclusively suffered by players who have barely had a break for years.
The 2019/20 season ended late due to the pandemic, also forcing the 2020/21 season to start late. The summer of 2021 saw a delayed Euros take place. The 2021/22 season started earlier than usual and ended later than usual, with a lot of players playing in the World Cup bang in the middle of it all. Then there was a Euros last summer as well. For a lot of players, the summer of 2023 was the only real pause in the last five or so years. And even then, Bukayo Saka scored a hat-trick for England on 19 June 2023, then scored seven minutes into Arsenal’s pre-season on 13 July. It’s a miracle he went as long as he did without a serious injury.
This time around, everyone has the chance to kick back and actually enjoy their holidays. There’s around six weeks from the international matches that were just played to our first -pre-season match, which comes over eight weeks since the final day of our season against Southampton.
25 May – Final Premier League game
10 June – Final international game
23 July – Arsenal’s first pre-season game (Vs. Milan)
That sort of break has got to be better for the players than the truncated stop-start nature of the players who are playing this summer. Manchester City and Chelsea haven’t even announced any pre-season games yet, presumably because their plans will change depending on how long they are in the Club World Cup. The final takes place on 13 July and the Premier League season kicks off on the weekend 16/17 August.
Last week Thomas Tuchel was speaking about the impact of the tournament this summer (links are set to open in a new tab today — apologies for yesterday and shoutout for the reminder in the arses!) and as much as I want to disagree with everything Tuchel says, I just couldn’t.
“I think it [the Club World Cup] will have a huge impact and it will give Liverpool and Arsenal a huge advantage in the next season to not be there,”
Tuchel gave England players two weeks off rather than one before having them report for international duty and it seems that went down well but also, ultimately, didn’t help when it came to actually feeling like they had a break: Speaking about the players he had on international duty with England, he said they
“After a long season, they feel the tiredness. Harry [Kane] said he felt like coming after one week would have been much harder.
“It was easier to come after two weeks. It gave him a kind of refreshment, and there were many players who came back after one week, and they said ‘Ah, we were just getting into holiday mode, and now we put the boots back on.’”
So arriving after one week off would’ve been harder, but arriving after two meant they’d just started to relax before their holidays abruptly ended. And let’s be real, it’s not like you can actually kick back and completely unwind and enjoy that holiday when you know you’re going to have to train again in a few days anyway. No wonder they couldn’t perform.
For the players at the Club World Cup, there is no real break. Maybe it won’t affect them in August or September, but as we get into the slog that can be December, January, February, you’d hope Arsenal are better equipped to keep on going than the teams who are involved over the next few weeks. And that’s not just Man City and Chelsea, but a number of sides we could come up against in the Champions League as well.
FIFA will no doubt expand the competition to 128 teams and try to have it played every other summer before long, meaning Arsenal — reluctant to say no to the money on offer — will be swept up what will eventually be rebranded as the three-month long Gianni Infantino x Elon Musk Invitational Soccer Bonanza played in the punishingly cold winters on Mars with that Salt Bae wanker invited along to sprinkle salt on the ball before each kick-off. As long as none of that is the case, I’ll be grateful for the well deserved time off for our players.
Much like Mars, there’s not much going on out there on the news front right now. Diario AS say Rodrygo has made a “complete 180 degree turn” at Real Madrid after a few days of training under Xabi Alonso and is now excited about what the future holds. It doesn’t really matter how much Arsenal are interested, this feels like a deal that only happens if the player is pushing for it, but if Alonso is going to use him regularly we can probably write that off.
There’s more talk about Nico Williams talking to both Bayern and Barcelona, and apparently willing to accept a fraction of the wage demands he has given the former if it means joining the latter. It feels like last summer all over again.
That’s your lot from me for the next couple of days, I’m going to get the barbecue out this weekend and enjoy enough drinks to make me light-headed but too few to ruin my sleep. Tim’s on duty to take you through the weekend and kick off the new week, and I’m looking forward to returning to my role as a daily Arseblog reader again. Cheers all, have a great weekend!
