Sometimes Google can really be your friend and on this occasion it spits out a handy quote from Arsene Wenger when he was Arsenal manager in 2010.
“The World Cup will dominate summer, but I believe that the big problem is that the gap between the end of the tournament and the start of the new season is too short,” Wenger said.
'It is almost impossible for every player in the world to play the World Cup final on July 11 and still hungry to play again on August 14. There is so much pressure and you need so much recovery time that it is unfair for the players. “
Fifteen years later and a number of neat symmetry is involved.
If a turnaround from 11 July to 14 August was a danger for players after South Africa 2010, what about July 13 to August 16? It's the same, yes?
Like exactly the same. 34 days. Yet this is the gap between the end of the FIFA Club World Cup this summer and the start of the English Premier League season.
So if it was not safe in 2010, what makes it safe now? What has changed? Nothing.
But Wenger has changed. Yes, Wenger has changed. One of the smartest football men we have ever had lucky to know is blinded by the FIFA's bright lights and shiny coins.
Where he was once a advocate for beauty and principles and charm and fraud, he is now so hard addicted to the terrible FIFA Gravy train of Gianni Infantino, it is a miracle that his arms have not been torn off.
Wenger-for those who have been sleeping for a while and a huge proponent of the monthly, 32-team festival this summer of FIFA-not in America. As a leader of global football development at FIFA, Wenger believes that the club world cup will help to grow the game.
He has heard the complaints of players and clubs and sports scientists about burnout and mental and physical fatigue of players, and beat them in the same way as his arsenal captain Tony Adams was once central.
However, it is strange, because Wenger also does other things for his FIFA Munt.
Last October it was announced that the 75-year-old FIFA Task Force would lead to the well-being of players. FIFA is worried, they say, about the requirements of the modern game, so that Wenger and his friends will look at it for us.
When I looked at the FIFA website on Thursday, there was a lot about the Club World Cup and not so much that it was clear about the Welfare Task Force for players. But I am sure they are hard in it on behalf of everyone.
We started to expect from such double and confused standards from Infantino and his friends. They have shape. However, it is a pity that Wenger has not succeeded in rising above everything. By standing on the FIFA platform, he legitimizes it all and they know it.
Does he know? It's hard to say. The only thing that is clear is that this is not the Wenger we thought we knew.
One of his greatest gifts as a coach was his innate ability to understand, feel and appreciate players what was good for them and what was not. He could smell the ugliness of football – and there has always been enough – to 100 fits and would close his door on it.
For years while other major clubs are hunting all over the world on pre-season dollar-Zouden Wenger and his Arsenal players are in the grass in the Austrian mountains. And when the right football started, they continued and won things.
He finally admitted. He lost the fight. Once in Kuala Lumpur with Arsenal I saw him paw to a play surface for a match in July. “Someone could be injured,” I found out later that he had said.
Those were the things that mattered then for a big man and for all his intelligence and balance and equanimity, he felt the stress and tensions of the game deep.
He knew what it felt like navigating through the physical and psychological warfare of the Premier League. He knew how good and narrow the margins were between success and failure.
And that is just one of the reasons why it is so difficult to believe that he is now looking at the overcrowded and exploitation football schedule without realizing deep in the heart of his football player that it is reckless and it is wrong.
Football needs a world cup in the club the next summer and a world cup of 48 teams as if it needs a world cup every two years that was actually an idea of wenger and as one of the really big thinkers of football that can't see, it's time for the armchair.
Wenger not only has double standards, he is also dangerous with it. He should be the sensible voice in the ear of Infantino, the one who is brave enough to withdraw him from the edge of his gluttony.
Instead, he is stacking the board high there. Just another poster boy for the surplus that will ultimately do for our game.
A Madley, Madley World
Ashley Young had his shirt pulled his shirt last weekend by two Manchester United defenders in Goodison Park, but referee Andy Madley saw only one of the violations in real time.
It was, it turned out, the weaker of the two tugs. Harry Maguire was not the real perpetrator. That was Matthijs de Ligt, who had used both hands.
But Madley had only given a punishment against Maguire, so it was only demonstrated that Hoek by the VAR officials. He made his decision to see the violation of De Ligt without getting the chance.
Had he shown that Freeze frame, he would probably keep his original call, albeit for a different reason.
Are you still with me? Perhaps not. And that catches another gloomy episode in the life of a system that continues to fail and embarrasses the Premier League.
Why Mourinho's conscience will be clear
Jose Mourinho could have used another word in describing the behavior of the Galatasaray bank during the Istanbul derby.
I am sure that he regrets that they 'jump like monkeys'. But that does not indicate racist intention or feeling. It just doesn't.
Everyone who chooses to interpret his words in this way is welcome on their side of the argument, but I would imagine that Mourinho will have slept with his conscience this week.
Red Alert for Carabao Cup Final
Liverpool goes inexorably to their second league title in 35 years after the midweek results, but I was in Anfield on Wednesday and saw enough to encourage Newcastle fans prior to the Carabao Cup final in fourteen days.
Liverpool has a Champions League Double header with PSG between now and the Wembley prone piece.
Newcastle has a FA Cup -similar play against Brighton and a Premier League match at West Ham.
If Alexander Isak is fit, a few pounds in Eddie Howe's team would not be the worst bet.
(Ed: Did you not play Nottingham Forest to go down?)
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