Die International Friendlies, Die

I hate international football with a burning passion. If international football was an entity I would launch it into the fucking sun.

Don’t get me wrong, the Euros and the World Cup are nice and all that but only because club football isn’t on. Mid-season international friendlies however, can bend themselves over a barrel and shaft themselves into a pile of dust as far as I am concerned.

I cannot think of a more useless thing in world football, other than those officials behind the goals in Champions League matches (what do they do?), but apart from that there’s nothing more pointless than an international friendly whilst the club season is on or about to start.

What is the point of taking players away from their clubs for 4-5 days to play an insignificant match? It is the footballing equivalent of belly button fluff or those tags you get at Ikea to screw your wardrobe or bookcase to the wall – utterly useless.

It always seems that Arsenal lose a player in some form or another whenever one of these feculent games is played. Either to injury, as we have with Jack, or to fatigue having flown off halfway around the world like Santi in August.

Aside from being completely pointless, international friendlies are also incredibly boring. I can’t watch England play international friendlies because it makes we want to pluck out my eyes and ram my fists into the blood soaked cavities. I can imagine only one thing more tedious than an England friendly and that would be Michael Owen and James Milner playing top trumps with colour sample cards from the white range at Homebase whilst Adrian Chiles commentates on it, Tony Pulis screams “GO ON SON, USE THE OLD LACE SAMPLE AND FUCKING RUIN HIM” from the sidelines and the best hits of Justin Bieber blare out of a 7.1 surround system so you get the full experience.

We have the biggest match of our season coming up on Saturday and with Jack now injured we’re pretty much out of options in midfield and will most likely have to play Arteta and Flamini. They can work together as they showed against Liverpool but it’s not ideal. Our only other option is to put Oxlade-Chamberlain in the middle, which I really hope Wenger does.

What is to be gained from international football during the season? Or a few days before the season starts? Surely it would be better to have a mid-season break and play 3-4 games over 14 days and do the same at the end of the season? All tournaments are played in the summer anyway so why not play most of the games at the end of the season, before everyone goes on holiday when you can get a true idea of the players who have something left in the tank?

My message to international football

How many times have players had rubbish tournaments because they are knackered? Wouldn’t seeing how your players cope with 3-4 games on the trot at the end of a club season on the non-tournament years give you a better idea of who is going to have some energy reserves when the tournaments come around?

Jack Wilshere is now out for 6 weeks and for what? What is an average performance against Denmark going to do for him or for England? Absolutely sod all. The injury, however, could ruin Arsenal’s season.

Every international break we lose a player. Every. Single. Bloody. Time. It’s devastating. We have enough injury problems every season without losing players to pointless friendlies.

How many times did we lose badger bollocks to international friendlies? Too many times is the answer.

Wenger will undoubtedly get the blame for us being short in midfield on Saturday now Jack is out and I feel sorry for the guy. It’s not his fault vapid and  unnecessary games are played before cup quarter finals.

Fuck you international football. Fuck you in the fucking face.

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