Whether you’re apathetic about pre-season friendlies or welcome them with open arms because you’ve missed club football so much over the summer, the cliches that accompany them make July kickabouts distinct from the rest of the footballing calendar.
Long may four of them persist. (Although the other one can get in the bin).
A Trialist
Is his name Adam? Perhaps it’s Alex or Adrian?
Whoever he is, A. Trialist has been a prolific goal-scorer in friendlies for several decades now, a model of consistency that would surely see him smash the Premier League odds for the Golden Boot were he ever to secure a well-earned move to the top-flight.
Instead, alas, he remains under-appreciated, notching regularly for Cowdenbeath and Barnet, Wealdstone and Dumbarton, across the summer before fading into obscurity for the remainder of the year.
All jokes aside, it is sad to see fewer clubs using this generic moniker these days, in their programme notes or online, better informed as they are regarding the away team’s striker, thrown into action at the last minute to see how he fares.
Youth Player Destined To Disappoint
We all like to secretly believe we’d be great scouts, that a lifetime of watching the game has made us experts on body shape and decision-making.
Should the next-big-thing pass our gaze as our team hones their fitness against Oldham, we’d identify their budding greatness in a heartbeat.
Only then our team does indeed play Oldham, and a promising youth player is duly rewarded with some minutes, and we hopelessly get it wrong.
The way he moves without the ball impresses. His composure on the ball brings to mind Franz Beckenbauer. The kid’s got it, you think. You’re sure of it.
He is never heard of again.
Deluded Optimism
Each and every summer we fall for it, a three-cup scam that wouldn’t fool a five year old.
First there is a six-goal pasting of inferior opposition who admittedly reside three leagues below your side but they did have arch-poacher Adam Trialist up front. Better yet, your woeful forward, who couldn’t hit a barn door last season, bagged a brace.
Then there is a comfortable beating of a side higher up the food chain, let’s say a Reading, or even a Stoke.
Lastly, as the endorphins kick in and feel-good vibes abound, your team successfully navigate foreign adversaries. Seville are ruthlessly put to the sword.
That’s it, you confidently attest, your team is going to win every trophy going in the coming campaign.
Indeed, you’re so certain of this that you’re genuinely confused to see them priced so generously to pip Manchester City to the title. Did the betting firms not see how the Royals were ran so ragged?
For the rest of the year we suffer mercilessly. We deserve this brief oasis of utter delusion.
From Southport To San Jose
If delusions of grandeur is a cliché that will play on repeat every July, regrettably there is another that has fallen out of favour, that of travelling to a smaller, local side in order to boost their coffers.
It used to be lovely, heading to Accrington or Bromley, enjoying their industrial-strength cups of tea, and watching your Premier League superstars – with naturally a good sprinkling of youth players – take on a more robust brand of football.
Now those same superstars are whisked across to the US or Asia, all to break new markets and extend the club’s marketing reach.
Football, literally and figuratively, is all the poorer for it.
Over-Sized Trophies
If pretend summer tournaments played overseas annoy, at least there is comedy value in the ludicrously pretentious trophies that are handed out for beating Bayern reserves, then eking past Ajax on pens.
Seeing Harry Kane so overjoyed at finally winning some silverware with Spurs in 2019 was a particular highlight, the success-starved goal-ace holding aloft an enormous trinket in Germany.
We assume a replica of the prestigious Audi Cup still has pride of place in the Tottenham trophy cabinet.
*Credit for all of the photos in this article belongs to AP Photo*
