Bad behaviour in a pre-season friendly - here we go again

Game 1, 2017-18

In the country where I live the football press is pregnant with pre-season flam. It can't wait to give birth to the new season, but for now is hampered by interviews in which every coach, player and manager is obliged to say that this year they have a really strong squad, and that all the lads worked very hard during training camp. The clubs are all in such good shape that clearly no one will be getting relegated next spring.

Cycling towards my first game of the season, I wish that referees could be afforded a platform for such inane optimism. "This year," I would tell the reporter from The Referee's Recorder, "I think that all players will be so focused on improving their game that they will allow the referees free rein to call the game as they see fit. We will see unprecedented levels of sportsmanship, and I doubt that I will have to whistle a single foul all season, let alone show a yellow card."

In fact what dulls my mood on a warm, breezy day is the prospect of all the inevitable cards and complaints over the coming months. This opener is a friendly game, but we've all learnt by now that classifying a football match as 'friendly' is like calling the civil war in Yemen a temperate discussion ground for some minor differences in interpreting the word of the Koran. Players don't tend to end the afternoon by swapping phone numbers and arranging to go out for a beer next week sometime.

Want to read more? Click here to order Reffing Hell: Stuck In The Middle Of A Game Gone Wrong by Ian Plenderleith (Halcyon Publishing), published on August 8, 2022.