It's about time that football officially recognised fan fatigue as a growing problem. While Premier League players trudge through the heat and humidity of whichever ill-advised global tour they've been booked on, their supporters face a preseason grind of their own: a 4 a.m. kick-off in California here, a meandering transfer saga there. Even the kit launches are dragged out, with to the inevitable conclusion of the third strip; fluorescent yellow again this year, is it?
What used to feel like an eternity between May and August now has barely a wasted day. You can almost feel the players' fatigue as they attempt to shake off their Euro 2016 or Copa America exertions by running themselves into the ground halfway across the globe to impress a new manager with new training methods and, crucially, a shopping list of squad replacements.