With a World Cup this summer and the play-offs to look forward….oh and the Champions League final, Darren Young takes a look at the seemingly never-ending finale to the football season…

They Think It’s All Over. Yeah right.  

‘I’ve got to watch it – it’s the final’ is my go-to excuse for viewing televised football matches every day and night at this time of year.

The word ‘final’ is inter-changeable. It can be – at any time – replaced with ‘last day of the season’ or ‘play offs’ and a few others depending on the situation.

I think my wife has kind of worked it out by now and just asks the question out of a duty-bound routine. She knows, as I do, that my protests that it’s somehow a concluding, last fix of football before it all shuts down for the summer, is as inaccurate as it is unrealistic.

Especially the way it goes now. Remember the old days, when everything finished on the actual ‘last day of the season’ in early May and everyone knew who was going where at the end of it, then we had a week to get ready for the only televised domestic live match that year; the FA Cup Final?

Seems a long time ago doesn’t it?

The Premier League has ushered in a new concept where the ‘last’ day became deliberately isolated and stand alone. It has its own day, away from the rest of the leagues, so that it could have sole focus and everyone’s attention. With weekends becoming ever full of live football it was a natural progression.

It also meant that no-one had an advantage or knew what they had to do based on other results, and of course gave us the very new (at the time) multi-game format where we could watch one live game but keep flicking to the others every few minutes – obviously always missing a goal on the game you’d had on in the first place.

This has been a successful staple of the Premier League for years, so it was bound to creep in to other leagues and over the last few years, it’s grown so that each division get their own ‘last day’ in the sun.

Who’s going to be the first league to have their last day of the season at the start, to get a jump on everyone? My guess is that it will be between Germany, Scotland and France, seeing as we know who’s won the league by then as it is.

In England, the National League went first this time, finishing the season at the end of April so they could get their new play-off system out of the way so that their final, final game is Saturday when Tranmere Rovers aim to get back into the EFL at the third attempt by beating Boreham Wood, who themselves have earned their shot at glory after a brilliant season, finishing fourth and also being the club that my team, Walsall, signed Charlie Ntamark from and therefore always occupying a special place in my heart.

Digressing slightly, but this is a column about the lower leagues, Charlie is a cult hero who played nearly three hundred WFC games in the nineties as well as representing Cameroon thirty-odd times. I note on Wikipedia that his birthplace is Paddington, although it doesn’t say if that’s referring to the hospital there or if a family from Boreham Wood found him at the station. Either way, it was to everyone’s benefit as Charlie became a firm favourite and also scored one of the most memorable and skilfully taken goals seen at the Bescot Stadium. Admittedly, it was an own goal (in a League Cup giant killing v West Ham – Google it!) but hey, they all count although the way he took it made you wonder why he only scored a dozen at the right end in his entire Saddlers career.

Back to the point and next it was EFL, with Saturday gone seeing the final League Two games in the afternoon, and then later on, the final round of League One fixtures. On Sunday, just after midday, all eyes were on The Championship as matters were settled there – helped by a fantastically coincidental set of fixtures that matched all the teams at the top who needed something against a team at the bottom, also needing something.

Of course, that’s not quite it. There are a dozen play-off games in the next week or so before the three Wembley finals that take place over the Bank Holiday weekend.

Other than a rogue play-off second leg, the Premier League has this coming Sunday to itself for ‘Super Last Day Sunday’ or whatever Sky are calling it this year. Although this week has been the gift that keeps on giving as every night seems to have a match that has serious implications at the top and bottom of the league at the moment.

Starting with Swansea v Southampton. That’s the other thing about the end of the season – there is always an incident that treads the line between ‘sportsmanship’ and the ‘dark arts’. In this one, the Saints had their hotel reservations cancelled last minute and had to stay near Cardiff and travel an hour (poor lambs) to the game instead of a short hop across the city.

The hotel said virus. Southampton said overly-zealous Swansea fans working at the hotel and a bit like Lasagne-gate of 2006, we might never know for sure, but it didn’t work anyway as the away team got the points that should keep them up; assuming they don’t go marching into a Manchester City goal blitz on Sunday.

So, after Sunday and then the FA Cup Final next Saturday, that’s more or less it for another season. My wife will be relieved.

There’s only the play off finals and the Champions League Final after that.

Oh, and England’s warm up games for the World Cup – ‘it’s the last friendly before it starts so I’ve got to watch it’.

And then, of course, the sixty-four games live from Russia.

‘It’s the last group game (Panama v Tunisia – recorded, naturally, as it’s played simultaneously with England’s final group game against Belgium) – so I’ve got to watch it’

Before we know it, it’ll be the 15^th July and the World Cup Final from Moscow. Which only comes around every four years, so you can’t miss that.

Then we can finally have a break and forget all about football and watch something else for a while.

Until the new season starts in the first Saturday of August. And if you don’t count the Community Shield or the build-up games before the 2018/19 campaign, that is.

‘It’s the last pre-season game – I have to watch it’

No answer. Strange.

‘And why am I getting letters from a solicitor?’