If you still need convincing that global soccer is not some well-designed professional landscape that functions because of the brilliance of its governing officials but is actually just a barely held together collection of compromises between competing interests that only succeeds because the game itself is so beloved, then I present to you: the September international break.
I'm sorry to all the international soccer-first fans out there, but this stinks. The club season is just kicking into gear, new signings are just starting to get acclimated to their new surroundings and their new teammates -- and then it just stops.
Rather than continuing to build cohesion, as you might in, I don't know, pretty much every other major team sport in the world, each club's major players fly off to South America or Eastern Europe or Asia to play a couple games in less than a week with a completely different set of teammates and coaches. Some key players inevitably get hurt, and pretty much no one is happy.
From my perspective, the beginning of the season is when I learn the most about each club team -- how their new players are being valued, what their new manager wants to do, how good they might be. I come into each season with a blurry projection for each team, and each game makes the picture a tiny bit clearer. But then, of course, the first international break comes, and all I'm left with is a vague impression of everyone, informed by some combination of preseason expectations and a measly three games -- 270 minutes -- of game time.
But rather than continuing to complain about the bureaucratic inefficiencies that plague the sport I cover for a living, let's try to wring as much insight as we can from those 270 minutes we all just got to watch. How much will the first three games of the Premier League season tell us about where things might end up after 38 games at the end of the season?