It must be summer and it must be the close season because suddenly every single football match that takes place feels like a ray of light in a sea of darkness.

And I know I am not alone in these desperate sentiments.

There are plenty of you out there who are getting excited over games that, under normal circumstances, would be slightly less appealing than washing the dishes.

For example, take the Under-21 European Cup currently taking place in Denmark.

Now some of you may rightly claim otherwise, but football at under-21 level is something most of us don’t give a fig about. We might check the scores and see who made the team, but that’s about it.

However, being the nearest thing to proper football available right now, it has turned into the must-watch tournament of the summer. All football fans I speak to seem to be either watching it or at least following it with serious intent, despite the fact that teams like Italy, France, Germany and the Netherlands didn’t even make it to the finals.

England’s young guns are, of course, entirely failing to live up to their potential, and showing in the process that they are probably ready to make the step up to the senior team.

So far they have scraped a lucky 1-1 draw with Spain and been held to a goalless draw by Ukraine, meaning they need to win today’s final group match with the Czech Republic to go through.

Meanwhile, Switzerland are storming the other group with two wins out of two (likely to the three out of three by the time you read this).

You see what I mean? I didn’t even realise I was following the tournament until I sat down to write this.

But our desperation for football doesn’t stop at under-21 level. Last week I went round to a friend’s house and found him screaming at the television. The cause of his excitement? The under-19s women’s European Cup semi-final.

And this despite the person in question normally being of the opinion that women playing football goes against the very nature of the sport, if not humanity as a whole.

Yet there he was, sitting on the edge of his seat, screaming at the Swiss defenders to get their act together against their vastly superior German opponents. Opponents who went on to beat Norway 8-1 in the final by the way, just in case you hadn’t been following this particular contest.

These summers without real football may only come along once every two years, but when they do they seem to drag on forever. Hence the need to get our fix anyway we can find it.

So those of you who aren’t addicted to the beautiful game please bear with those of us who are during this difficult period. We may be acting slightly irrationally for a few months.

Never-ending story

Talking of the summer, what’s the other way you can tell the close season is upon us? Because the newspapers, websites and sports programmes are starting to fill up with the annual ‘Cesc Fabregas moving to Barcelona’ nonsense.

I recall a similar situation with Patrick Viera a few years ago, when every summer we would have to read countless column inches about whether or not the Frenchman was going to leave Arsenal.

At the time the continued speculation drove me to the point of absolute boredom. And the same can now safely be said of the Fabregas saga.

Frankly I couldn’t care less if he stayed at the Emirates, moved to Barcelona or gave up football, had a sex change and started a new career as a topless barmaid.

I appreciate he is a good player, a great player, in fact. And I also appreciate he could be key to Arsenal’s and Arsene Wenger’s future. No club wants to lose a player like him, and most clubs would want to have him.

But the simple truth is I am sick to the back teeth at being faced with daily stories about the on/off move, some insisting he has never been happier in London, others claiming his move to Barca is a done deal.

My only hope is that the player, agents, managers and clubs involved can either do a deal quickly. Or not do one quickly.

I don’t care how starved of football I am, I don’t fancy another summer of this speculative drivel.

Steve McClaren’s no Forest Gump

For some reason, either despite his failings at international level or possibly because of them, I have a soft spot for Steve McClaren.

Let’s face it, bigger names with more illustrious careers behind them have taken on the England job and failed. Maybe not in such spectacular fashion, true, but nevertheless it’s not as if pre-McClaren England were winners, and the post-McClaren team certainly aren’t.

Last week McClaren was linked with the Aston Villa job but ultimately ended up at Nottingham Forest instead. And I think that is the perfect appointment for the former Manchester United coach.

Taking on a high-profile Premiership job at this point in his career-rebuilding process would have put him right in the firing line. It would have been added pressure that he just doesn’t need.

On the other hand, the Forest job is ideal. They are a once-great club with buckets of tradition and huge amounts of potential.

However, they are struggling to get back to the top flight despite going close in recent seasons.

That means McClaren has the possibility of not taking over a Premier League team but actually building one. And, to my mind, that comes with a lot more credibility.

I’m not saying he will be an instant success. There are never any guarantees of that in football.

But I think, considering the type of football he likes his teams to play and the fact that he will be building on reasonably solid foundations, he could very well be the right man for the job.

If he manages to take Forest back to the big time then he will have done so through coaching ability rather than by spending on big-money transfers.

In other words, taking this step back down the football pyramid could be the perfect opportunity for him to prove himself as an all-round manager.

Of course, it could all go horribly wrong. A year from now he could be standing on the touchline at Wembley under his umbrella watching Forest lose in the play-off final.

But I get the feeling that won’t happen and we could, sooner rather than later, see McClaren managing a top flight club again.

I tell you what, with the likes of McClaren, Sam Allardyce and Sven Goran Eriksson managing in the Championship this season, it should be one heck of a league to watch.

sportscolumnist@timesofmalta.com
Twitter: @maltablade