Like most of you, I really struggle off-season, however, the hole created by lack of Premier League action is sporadically filled by other football happenings.
The Euro’s, World Cup, Afcon, Women’s World Cup, friendlies and the transfer market.
I’m gonna get absolutely slated for what I’m about to say, but I truly believe most people think the same but just won’t admit it.
I don’t really watch the Women’s World Cup ouch!
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m all for women’s football. They are great athletes and as passionate and committed, if not more, than most of their male counterparts, with a long history stretching back well over 100 years.
But I just can’t get into it?
In the early days, women’s football was considered a "spectacle". In 1921, the FA banned women from playing on league grounds, saying: “The game of football is quite unsuitable for females and ought not to be encouraged.”
Haha, how frikkin stupid!
It was only four decades later that the old farts reconsidered and women’s football again began to flourish.
In 1999, over 90 000 fans witnessed the World Cup final in which the USA beat China 5-4 on penalties.
So why don’t I follow it?
The only truth I can dig out is that I actually don’t enjoy it.
Is it the lack of quality compared to the version I watch in the Premier League?
Either way that wouldn’t be a valid reason.
I watch schoolboy and amateur football which can be terrible technically.
Am I a closet chauvinist? A football bigot?
Well if I was reading this right now, that’s the conclusion I’d come to.
However, here’s the saving grace as I struggle to understand myself.
Wait for it, I don’t really watch Afcon either!
Seriously, despite missing football so much and despite some of the world’s best players strutting their stuff, my interest in the continental showpiece is about 3 out of 10!
Watching Bafana Bafana squeezing past Namibia the other night didn’t help.
The only assumption I can make is that the marketers of the Premier League have done such a great job on me that little else matters.
ADDICTION: Premier League is my drug of choice. Photo: PETER POWELL/EPA
They’ve focused me in, I’m one of millions of little Premier League bitches sucking Premier League balls.
It’s all so contradictory because I hate the modern game and everything it brings with it - the lack of loyalty, the player power, the business ethos, the cheating, the treatment of "ordinary" fans It’s horrible, but I stick with it.
As a recovered addict, it’s easy to draw comparisons with my past problems.
I knew what I was doing, I knew it was bad for me (and those around me), I knew I needed to stop, but I just kept on going!
So yeah, all strength to women’s football and Afcon, this is about me. Does anyone know a decent football rehab centre?