It came home, now let it stay home – haven’t we had enough of football for a while?

I love football, I really do – but fans need a breather, writes David Harding

If you worry about the workload for players, then spare a thought for the fans (AP)

Just 75 short days ago, on 22 May, Ilkay Gundogan ensured Manchester City won the Premier League with a dramatic winner against Aston Villa – and football disappeared into the distance for its summer break.

Except, of course, this being football, it didn’t. It never disappears.

There then followed a Champions League final between Liverpool and Real Madrid, a match which morphed into a diplomatic incident between the UK and France, a series of internationals where England embarrassed themselves, and on 5 June, Wales qualified for the World Cup.

Two days later, incredibly, qualifiers for this season’s Champions League began. The final for that competition is scheduled for 10 June, 2023. Just a few days after the qualifiers began, players in the Championship reported back for training.

If you couldn’t survive the 48 hours of football’s “close season”, a quaint old term used when football actually used to stop, there has been the long running saga of the Chelsea sale story, another grumpy new Dutch coach appointed at Manchester United, some fancy accounting at Barcelona, and the still unresolved saga of where Cristiano Ronaldo will practice his goal celebrations this season, to keep the most diehard of fans happy.

Tonight, in south London, it all “begins” again.

Crystal Palace take on Arsenal to start what will be football’s longest ever season. And there is a simple reason that the next year will see the longest ever season: more football.

In November and December, football will break off for its own World Cup. This next few months, even as we continue to bask in a Britain which has become Mediterranean, will be a continual drip feed of Erling Haaland is great/ Erling Haaland is rubbish, depending on how many goals the Norwegian does or doesn’t score, will anyone join Manchester City and Liverpool in the race for the title, and why did Tottenham disappoint again?

There will also be plenty of opportunities “to learn from that”, interminable discussions about VAR, examination of offside lines, was Timo Werner offside again and “he’ll be disappointed with that”.

It just never ends.

I love football, I really do. I even survived watching Southampton share no goals with Everton as my first ever game then choosing a team so bad to support they made my school life hell.

I have watched league games from Torquay to Carlisle, Argentina to Qatar, and been lucky enough to be at European finals and a World Cup. I was so bewitched by the sport that when my team didn’t play I would go with two mates to regularly watch their sides, Fulham and Newcastle, when they were really bad. Truly awful. (the teams, not my mates).

But at least there was always a point in the calendar when I knew I could breathe, relax, forget about football and prepare for the league to begin again in a few months’ time. Get my hopes up over a period of months, not days. Nowadays, there is just no breather. If you worry about the workload for players, then spare a thought for the fans.

By the time Jack Grealish takes his first fall of the season, Britain will be on the verge of a second heatwave of the summer. Mostly, because we are only halfway through summer.

England’s cricket team won’t have even started their main test series of the year, it is less that two weeks since the Tour de France cycled down the Champs Elysees, not even a month since Nick Kyrgios was talking to himself on a chair at the Wimbledon final, and the Hundred, cricket’s main event of the summer, is about four games old.

Football is not only everywhere, it is everywhere all the time.

Which is also a shame for other sports, which have excelled this summer, taking maximum advantage of the short time they have had to shine before the blanket of fog that is football descends on them.

The Commonwealth Games have been surprisingly enjoyable, especially the needle between rivals in the swimming pool, as well as the surprising stories it throws up, including the success of the Sirieix family.

The Tour de France was a classic with a surprising winner, Wimbledon a blast even with a predictable winner, but especially because of Ons Jabeur, as well as Kyrgios and Stefanos Tsitsipas hating each other. And when England’s men’s test team have made it on to the pitch, they have been exciting as at any point since 2005.

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Of course, the big success of the summer has been football, ironicallt, but in the shape of the Women’s Euros and England’s success. But even if the sport was no novelty, most of the faces that excelled were, giving it a freshness that the ever present men’s game can only aspire to.

From tonight it is back to months of Pep and Harry, Gary and Gary, Alan, Jamie and Micah. And then there are the inevitable grumpy Roy Keane memes, the Graeme Souness rants and Ian Wright trending on Twitter, though that is usually a good thing.

And it is all just a little too soon. You really can have too much of a good thing, as well as waiting up for the highlights of Wolves v Bournemouth.

Welcome back lads, but next time, take longer off.