Just last week a report showed that 27 of the 42 senior Scottish clubs would consider a switch to summer football.
It’s an interesting topic with some crazy opinions flying about, the pro summer camp say it would increase attendances due to good weather, maybe, for about one weekend, whereas the anti summer brigade claim moving from the traditional European season would affect our clubs’ chances in Europe, despite most of our clubs failing to get through the qualifiers, which take place in summer…
But for now the fact of the matter is the domestic season is over and we now face a long few weeks without the SPFL, Barclays Premier League etc. If, like me, you cant go that long without football, here’s a handy guide to what football is on offer throughout the summer
Copa America
A tournament that features Messi, Neymar, Cavani, Sanchez, Rodriguez and more! During the barren summer months? Surely one of the companies I spend my hard earned wages on monthly will have realized that a guy like me wants to watch such a tournament?
Sadly no, they have obviously spunked their load on the Premiership rights deal, so by paying over the odds for Watford v West Brom next season, they have made me now subscribe to a third sports channel in Premier Sports who are showing the whole tournament. Its been good so far but you can also get “entirely legal feeds” on Youtube should you fancy it.
Women’s World Cup
Available on both BBC and the free sports channel (kind of, if you have Sky) Eurosport is the Women’s World Cup. Women’s football is derided by many people, people who in the main don’t watch it and think Richard Keys and Andy Gray were treated harshly when they were sacked by Sky. Arseholes, basically.
I started watching women’s football during the London Olympics and I’d recommend watching a game, the ball is mostly kept on the deck, teams almost never park the bus, try to attack and play nice stuff and you never see the players diving or rolling about the turf or brandishing a fake card trying to get an opponent sent off. One criticism is that too many teams means the quality drops a little (teams hit 10 twice in the group stage) but with the knockout rounds just starting, now is the time to get your teeth into it.
European U21s Championship
Live on BT Sport featuring only 8 teams, we have the European U21 Championships where you can watch a combination of guys who will go on to become true world stars playing with some other players you will likely never hear of again.
There’s some real talent on show, tune in to see if Harry Kane really is the player the English media hope he is and if poor John Guidetti can convince anyone to meet his wage demands.
Summer Leagues
The Scandanavian leagues and MLS both run throughout the summer, MLS now being televised on Sky, while maybe not having the same quality of the European Leagues the teams are all pretty evenly matched and tend to try and attack. The Scandanavian leagues are not televised as far as I know but you can always stick an accumulator on, only to realise when you go to check the result that if you don’t even know what country Bodo Glimt and Odd Grenland play in, what chance do you have of correctly predicting a win for Bodo (BTTS)?
Of course you could always not bother watching any of this and go on holiday, play golf, take up a new hobby or join a gym or otherwise waste your time when you could be placing a scorecast wager on Inter Turku vs. FC Lathi.
That’s football!
