Who needs football when Premier League winter break provides prime content? | Marina Hyde

The hiatus enables clubs to focus on their football-adjacent core functions – in association with official partners, of course

I cannot think of a more ideal innovation in the Premier League’s consciously uncoupled relationship with football than the winter break. One of my pet theories (there are about 12 of them, covering all human experience) is that football fans detest talking about football. Honestly, anything to get away from it.

They mainly don’t even want to read about it. Tactics, technique, deep analysis – these are niche interests and obsessions, in which most people largely feign vaguely respectful interest because they’re regarded as being a traditional but clearly tangential part of the much larger experience. A bit like the gherkin in a Big Mac. Indeed, many discard them entirely. A very small section of people really do care about those things, of course, which is why there is a very small amount of content among the vast tumult of football content to cater to them. But in the main, people would do anything to avoid this stuff.

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