I told a lie on “The Gab & Juls Podcast” on Monday when I said that Sunday’s UEFA Nations League final — with Spain beating Croatia on penalties — symbolically wrapped up the 2022-23 European season. Of course, it does no such thing, of course, because there was more international football on Monday and Tuesday, qualifying games for Euro 2024, in fact.
If that’s your symbolic end to 2022-23, enjoy your time off. You get a whole seven days until the 2023-24 season begins with the Champions League preliminary round. (And this one’s a doozy: a Final Four-style tournament in Iceland between Atletic Club D’Escaldes from Andorra, Tre Penne from San Marino, Breidablik from Iceland and Buducnost from Montenegro.)
A seven-day break for the fan … only it’s not really a break. If you’re a fanatic like me, you’ll be watching the football they’ve wedged in between, such as the European Under-21 championship, which kicked off Wednesday in Romania and Georgia. (Lois Openda, Ryan Gravenberch, Mykhaylo Mudryk, Jacob Ramsey, Amine Gouiri, Elye Wahi, Sandro Tonali … sign me up!)
If it feels like too much football, that’s because it is. Or, rather, it’s too much in the way trying to watch an entire streaming catalog is too much. You’ll get fatigued, you’ll lose interest, and a lot of what you watch will be boring, repetitive and irrelevant to your interests.
But guess what? It’s OK, because for much of the audience, the consumption of football has become like the consumption of streaming TV. You’ll have your favorites; some will be genuinely huge, popular culture-defining shows, and some will be more niche pleasures — I assume somebody out there is watching “Selling Sunset,” otherwise they wouldn’t have made six seasons of it — in the same way some people support Real Madrid or Manchester United, while others support Elche and Sassuolo.
Then there will be the really big shows that you may or may not be emotionally invested in, but you watch anyway because everybody is talking about them. Those are the equivalent of “Squid Game” or “Stranger Things” or, back in the day, “Breaking Bad” and “The Sopranos.” That’ll be your Champions League knockout stages, your title deciders in the top European leagues, World Cups and Euros … and not much else.
There’s something for everyone. That’s why I’m not concerned about “too much football” from a fan’s perspective. It would be like saying there are too many videos on TikTok or, if you’re old school, too many books in the library.
