By Grant James

As we all watched England throw away a comfortable 2-0 lead with 2 last minute goals in a meaningless friendly at a sold out Wembley against Spain, I sat there for a second and thought to myself… what’s the point? Liverpool reject Iago Aspas scored arguably the best goal of his career literally out of nowhere, with Real Madrid benchwarmer Isco nutmegging Burnley’s number 1 in the 96th minute of the game to salvage a draw, but I couldn’t help but laugh at the absolute stereotypical England performance of recent years I had just witnessed. Despite 4 goals, the game was as cliché as international fixtures come – slow, boring and painful to watch. Here’s why we all hate the international break.

1) No Premier League football

As players are scattered all over the world, Premier League football is put on hold for a fortnight. It is the longest, most agonising 2 weeks as a football fan, as we’re forced to watch Newport versus Colchester in League 2 to satisfy our footballing addiction. Then, when Premier League football returns, our teams perform like it’s the first time they’ve ever played together, losing all the momentum built up in the previous weeks and are back to square one.

2) Terrible fixtures

Just as the domestic football season gets back underway, it’s halted 3 weekends later because of glamour fixtures such as Luxembourg vs. Ukraine, Montenegro vs. Faroe Islands, Lithuania vs. Macedonia that we all can’t wait to sit down and spend an hour and a half of our lives watching. How many times is it we’ve watched England sweep aside San Marino part-timers now?

3) Injuries

There can’t be a worse feeling in football than watching your teams star player clutching the back of his thigh on some horrifically dodgy pitch in West Africa as they’ve just pulled their hamstring lunging into a tackle, giving that extra 10% for their country just not to be slated in the national papers the next morning. Managers and fans hold their breath during international breaks, as club physio’s deal with the aftermath of dangerous surfaces and clumsy 6ft 7 part-time defenders when their stars return from all corners of the globe.

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4) Supporting players you hate

What was worse than England being pummeled out of Euro 2016 by a nation of just 300,000 people, was that we’d spent the past year painfully cheering on a team majorly dominated by Tottenham and Liverpool players; arguably 2 of the most disliked clubs in the country. Most fans couldn’t stand half of the players Hodgson had selected, yet we swallowed our pride because of our love for England, and this is how they repay us? Joke’s on us fans then really, as it was all an embarrassing waste of time and effort…

5) Fixture pile up

We all know the qualifying fixtures have to be played, but there is absolutely no need for friendlies mid-season. They clog up the fixture list and are nothing more than glorified training session. To combat fixture congestion, FIFA could open a window twice a year for nations to conduct the friendlies and qualifying matches which would not only spare clubs from risking their players, but would also enable national team managers to make their team gel in a relatively longer period than of a week they presently do. It would also reduce the unnecessary piling up of matches, and at the same time, keep players and fans excited for a run of international matches.

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