It’s here: the second wave. A modified, mutated and more complex strain of the first, sweeping across an unprepared continent with devastating speed, raising the obvious question of whether more could have been done in advance to prevent it. The only saving grace, perhaps, is that the new outbreak of Uefa’s Nations League competition appears to be far less contagious than its predecessor.
The original version, won in 2019 by Portugal (a fact I looked up so you didn’t have to), was conceived by Michel Platini as a convoluted way of ensuring more competitive international fixtures: more of the games you love, in a format you’ll hate. Now comes its rejigged successor, swollen from 142 to 170 matches and bearing a subtly different burden: rallying a sceptical public to the cause of international football in a world of closed borders and confinement.
At the outset of which, it is probably worth asking a few questions. Do we need this? Do we need this now, during the turbulence of the transfer window and just as domestic leagues are trying to get back on their feet? Is it a great idea to be forcing players and staff to fly all over the continent in the middle of a pandemic? Does it really need to be 18 months long? And how, for the love of mercy, does this thing work?
“Look, it’s really simple,” some bloke in the pub will begin by way of explanation, about 45 minutes before giving up and collapsing into sobs. Complicating things still further is next year’s rescheduled European Championship, which hasn’t even finished its qualification process. So, for example, on Friday night Scotland play Israel in the Nations League. Next month Scotland play Israel again, this time in their Euro play-off semi-final. Then, in November, Scotland meet Israel for a third time in their reverse Nations League fixture. This is, in short, an utter mess: an unwieldy sprawl of paths and pots and play-offs and “play-outs” that is the sort of thing you devise when you want to kill international football, not revive it.
It is a format that made little sense in the best of times and makes even less in ours. The logistics of organising a pan-European competition in the midst of a pandemic has led to a swathe of positive tests, players refusing call-ups, clubs refusing to release players for duty and quarantine restrictions wreaking havoc on squads and their travel plans.
The entire Czech Republic squad has been re-tested after a staff member contracted the virus. Paul Pogba, Miralem Pjanic and Adama Traoré are among the high-profile players already to have tested positive. Iceland will be without Gylfi Sigurdsson and Johann Berg Gudmundsson against England. In the chaos, Uefa has tried to impose some semblance of a protocol: games will take place if a country has 13 fit players, otherwise they may have to forfeit.
All of which raises the spectre of a tournament held under the threat of pure farce or worse: of games postponed at the last minute, of teams forced to choose between humiliation and forfeit, of qualification being decided by lots and perhaps even in the courts, of matches being cancelled by government decree, which is definitely a power they will not be tempted to abuse.
And so: why, exactly, are we putting ourselves through all this? Money is one answer, but not the only one. Nations League revenue may not exactly be redistributive, but nor is it a monstrous cash-grab by the biggest nations. For the smaller ones, the guaranteed seven-figure payout is a vital lifeline. For the rest of us, we simply get to watch some of the world’s best footballers duking it out for our entertainment.
In the initial two rounds of fixtures lies a plethora of fascinating subplots. Germany v Spain offers us a glimpse of European football’s future: Ansu Fati, Eric García, Kai Havertz. Portugal v Croatia will provide a snapshot of two sides in transition, one from its greatest generation, the other from its greatest player (Cristiano Ronaldo), who awkwardly still happens to be their best player and is just one short of 100 international goals. Then we have Roberto Mancini’s experimental Italy, the Netherlands’ post-Koeman promise, France’s ridiculous abundance of talent, England’s valiant search for a midfield.
The temptation, particularly after 10 months without any meaningful international football, is to regard all this as somehow superfluous, extraneous, disconnected from the real business of My Team and Who They’re Signing Next. And yet, for all the hoops and obstacles, the health risks and the unfathomable permutations, we are where we are. There comes a point where you simply have to ride this thing and see where it all takes us.
Because, on some level, this is the stuff we’ve all been missing: football across borders, hosting and visiting, system versus system, tradition versus tradition. Even if your only real investment in the international break is to moan about the international break, there’s a ritual and a normality there: something interrupted and broken and only now blinking back defiantly into life.