The rhythm of the season just get’s broken up some how. My Saturday habits are put on hold for national glory(\s). Maybe watching a game, following the goal reports, he soothing monotony of Final Score, Match of the Day …all just gone.
Surely it is one of the levelers of the game. If you are a big enough club to have international class players, in the past you had to accept that those players would be missing for part of the season. You have a big enough squad, manage around it. Chance for the lower reaches of the table to make up some ground. Chance for some youngsters to get first team experience.
The game is too widely played and scouting is too international for it to be an effective leveller.
It’s acceptable in rugby union for example because there are far fewer top countries to draw talent from: the vast majority of the Gallagher Premiership is English, so the top 25 English players and a scattering of foreign players being absent doesn’t hit the match quality so hard. Saracens get fucked over every year during the Six Nations because they have so many of the best players unavailable, but even then the league is decided by a playoff system so dropping points in the Spring isn’t such a bad thing as long as they make the top 4. If the title could be decided by a single point, I’d feel differently.
It doesn’t work for a global game. Eight of the unimpressive Fulham lineup that lost to Villa would be gone and six of the Nottingham Forest XI. The bottom clubs wouldn’t be much better off than the top clubs and the ridiculous demands this would place on squad depth would favour the sides with the deepest pockets.