We're a World Cup short this summer – someone owes us

It's been a summer of discontent for those of us who demand a major global event to entertain us in the football off-season.

The winter World Cup has always seemed like a bad idea for many reasons, whether you prefer the ethical, political or even just the tradition-breaking arguments against it. But the knock-on effect of a relatively blank summer sporting schedule didn't even feature on most people's lists of complaints until we experienced it over the last few weeks. We've been left with a sporting vacuum that ironically has denied us the opportunity to clean up over the summer.

No sticker books have been filled in, boxes of barbecue burgers remain unburned and, worst of all, no massive-value Ecuadorian full-back has been lumped on at 20-1 to score at any time after your mate discovered he's actually going to play up front and be on penalties and free kicks.

Euro 2022 has provided mid-summer excitement for sure, but a tournament that includes games at Rotherham, Leigh Sports Village and Manchester City's Academy Stadium doesn't quite measure up to the 32-team behemoth we would normally have been enjoying.

Aside from the women's Euros, we've had Royal Ascot, Wimbledon, the Tour de France, the British Grand Prix and, starting today, the Open at St Andrews. They have all been great so far, but those are basic sporting human rights that even the most desperate Tory leadership candidate wouldn't try to take away.

The unexpected pleasure of the summer so far has been the England cricket team trying to keep our attention by playing like a T20 team in Test matches and like a village pub Sunday side that still has only ten men after borrowing one from the opposition in the one-day internationals. Wild stuff.

However, it has all seemed like a massive waste without the scheduled World Cup we would have been having if Australia, Japan, South Korea or the United States had done the decent thing and found some bigger brown paper bags during the 2010 selection process.

Even without an Olympics, the Commonwealth Games might have held our attention for a while, but for a genius bit of scheduling that means the Birmingham jamboree is set to start on July 28, the day before the EFL kicks off again.

Another issue I have with the first winter World Cup is that it's not going to live up to its billing in the way that the Winter Olympics provides a counterpart to the Summer Olympics. If it's going to be in winter, we want to see snow, bobble hats, Bovril and freezing breath being exhaled as players wait for corners to be taken. Call me pessimistic but I don't think Qatar is going to live up to that.

A refreshing change might have been welcome. We're extremely used to World Cups being played in blazing sunshine, with Tommy Coyne needing bags of water to be thrown at him, pink limbs and bellies flailing when England score and Brazil's Carlos Alberto scoring the 'best goal of all time' during what was apparently the first known game of walking football.

What we haven't seen is a proper winter World Cup. In the same way that it was nice that the going was heavy on the last two days of Royal Ascot in 2021 to give the mudlarks a rare chance of glory – if you're going to have a Winter World Cup, hold it in Iceland or the Faroes or Canada.

We know Brazil, Spain and Argentina can look pretty handy with the sun on their backs. Let's see if they can do it on a brass-monkeys Tuesday night in Reykjavik. Just imagine the snoods, gloves, tights and designer ear muffs that would be on show.

What we're going to get instead is the spectacle we would have savoured in this sparse sporting summer slapped into the middle of the club football season when we want… club football.

Everyone's buzzing for the new season

Talking of club football, thanks to the intervention of the World Cup into the 2022-23 schedule, the new domestic campaign is almost upon us and the search continues for the first new arrival who is "not buzzing", "has been made to feel really unwelcome by all the lads" and "really doesn't want to get out there and show what he can do".

Bonus points available for anyone who tells the local media that, while fans are expecting to win the league following his signature, he's in fact planning to get injured during the final pre-season friendly, lose his expected place in the team, get loaned out to the National League when he's finally fit in October and make the deal permanent in January. Still, at least when he gets there he'll find they're a great bunch of lads.

Finally, reports that the iFollow streaming service will be available for more games this season, even though the Saturday 3pm blackout outside the international window is to be retained, would be most welcome if the news is confirmed.

After every game was available during lockdown, the Saturday shutters inexplicably went back up last season, but reports suggest matches during the World Cup, plus more midweek and bank holiday fixtures will be available this year. In the Netflix/Amazon/Disney+ era, people are accustomed to paying streaming subscriptions and the thinking that it detracts from matchday attendances is archaic. Fans will go to games if they can and watch a stream if they can't.

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