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The return of football marks the return of normality

With parliament in recess, silly season is in full swing. In fact, silly season would be an apt name for the transitional period between the dying days of the previous Premier League season, and the Bacchanalia that greets the opening weekend of the next one. Football’s silly season is a time when Slovenian journalists can sentence Jose Mourinho to three years in jail, when Wales can become (arguably) the third best team in Europe, and when Manchester United can decide that a player – any player – is worth €100 million.

That last, silliest of silly season traditions, is the essential contradiction that greets the start of a new season. The return of football has a quotidian significance, like the re-rising of the sun every morning. In its banality, it is the antithesis of the mad spending that always precedes it.

But Saturday football is not just about the players and managers and moneymen.

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