The international break gives me a time to dissect the club v country discussion. How patriotic are you? Except you support ("are from") a football power house like Brazil, Italy, Germany or Argentina (no England please!) chances are you show more love for a Euro club side than your country. There's some logic to this; excluding friendlies countries play an average of five (only) competitive games in a year. Compare that to your favorite club that could play that many matches in a fortnight. In addition there is a sparsity of quality matches outside of tournaments or competitions and it is easy to see why hearts are won over by club footie.
Still there's pride in hearing the national anthem ringing out before matches and patriotic fervor gushing through veins as national heroes prepare to battle. If you are lucky (or support a power house country) there may be a chance of having a "fantasy league" array of stars from the top clubs to select from. On the other side there are those supporters who have only the odd star player on whose shoulders lie the weight of carrying their nation to the promised land. Nowadays a lot of players see the Champions league as their "World Cup" , with their nations many may never showcase their talents in that holy grail. A classic case is George Weah, a World footballer of the year who never got a chance to play in a World Cup.
There's a chicken-and-egg scenario though as many players will never have been signed by their club sides if not for their national team performances and likewise many a player would never have had a call up without starring for their clubs. The star names we expect to shine at tournaments are typically hyped due to their club form so maybe one cannot do without the other. Don't get me wrong I look forward to watching tournament football; continental or global I don't discriminate. It's the necessary evil of qualifiers for these competitions that task me. These qualifiers interrupt the league season, result in players travelling thousands of miles around the globe and occasionally result in the odd injury that deprives salary-paying clubs of their employees.
A novel idea that just struck me will be to have qualifiers played over a short period of time (4-6 weeks). The challenge will be when to have these qualifiers? perhaps during the summer break?. It could work, if you take away all the international "breaks" and instead adjust the season to start a month earlier or later and during that recovered month play all the needed qualifiers. It'll be great! now where is FIFA when you need them to be listening.
Another derby for the 'Pool this weekend - the Northwest derby against Man Utd. Last season's victory was one of the few highlights of last season and it'll be great to have a repeat this year.
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