So, how’s everyone enjoying the Club World Cup? Me neither! I don’t think I have watched more than 10 minutes of action so far. And most of those 600 seconds occurred by mistake or by coincidence, either because a game happened to be on where I happened to be, or because I accidentally came across a match while looking for something else. It simply hasn’t grabbed my attention, tickled my fancy or ignited my imagination. As I said before, that might change when we get to the knockout stages, but even at that point, I estimate the chances of me actively changing plans to watch one of the games will range somewhere between zero and not at all. Maybe it’s just me. Maybe the rest of the football-loving world has taken to the CWC like ducks to water. Maybe fans everywhere are basking in the warm glow of their new favourite tournament. Maybe. But I suspect not. We don’t know what the television viewing figures are for the tournament so far, but I firmly believe they aren’t nearly as sexy as FIFA had hoped. I move in very footbally circles, but I have yet to meet anyone who has watched more than one match, and they only watched that because their team was playing. As tournaments go, it feels incredibly self-indulgent. Having said that, I don’t agree with those saying the competition is obviously a flop because the games are being played in half-empty grounds. That was always likely to happen, considering many of the teams are totally obscure, and many of the stadiums are too big, and some of the games are being played on workdays in the afternoon. And it’s in the US, where soccer is still an alien concept to many. In the real World Cup, you often get less-than-packed attendances in the group stages, and that has much more mass appeal than this concocted nonsense. So yes, we can find plenty of sticks to beat FIFA with when it comes to this competitive abomination – the mismatched teams, the additional strain on tired players, the pursuit of greed, the landscape-altering prize money – but low in-person crowds isn’t one of them. It’s a tournament that didn’t need to happen and, if the football authorities actually cared about the players who make the sport possible, they would have kept its original, small-scale format. It’s going to take an awful lot to happen between now and the final to change my mind on that. Keeping something in reserve Here’s a question for you: As a professional footballer, what’s more important – playing regularly or getting paid well? I honestly don’t know what the answer is. It depends on your personal situation, I guess. But reading about Scott Carson last week made me wonder how many other professionals would spend six years of their career, possibly the final six years, as a third-choice keeper? The 39-year-old has been at Manchester City since 2019 where he arrived on loan before making the move permanent in 2021. In that time, he has made just two appearances for the club, totalling 117 minutes of competitive football. That must be soul-destroying for a player: turning up for training every single day, putting your heart into making sure you are match-ready but knowing there is little to no chance of actually playing. Sure, he will have been paid handsomely for his trouble. But this is a keeper who played for England at every level; a keeper who played over 500 games for a variety of top clubs in England and Europe. How does someone like that decide to go into what can only be described as semi-retirement at the age of 33? The media has been claiming he won 11 trophies during his time with City. He may well have been part of a squad that did but, as far as I know, you only get to call yourself a winner of those trophies if you play a certain number of games; and he obviously didn’t. As I said, I am not saying his decision was right or wrong. If he was happy to give up competitive football in return for a hefty pay cheque, then good for him. I just find it strange that a player who was probably not short of cash anyway would be prepared to swap game time for job security. It will be interesting to see what he does now. He’s effectively had a six-year rest, so he could definitely play on for a few more years. But I suspect he doesn’t want to. Making way for the exotic name I think I may have fallen out of love with Sheffield United. Regular readers will know there is nothing I hate more than foreign owners coming into a club, spending a few weeks swanning around like they own the place (which they do, to be fair) and then firing their British manager in favour of a more exotic one. Well, that is exactly what has happened at Bramall Lane. Chris Wilder led the team to 92 points last season, a total that would normally win you automatic promotion to the Premier League. Due to the quirk of both Leeds United and Burnley having exceptional seasons, it didn’t. That confined them to the play-offs, where they then kept up their perfect record of taking part 10 times and failing to get promoted 10 times. But that doesn’t change the fact that Wilder did an excellent job; he took a demoralised team that had been relegated from the top flight, cleared out most of the players and built an almost entirely new squad. And his reward? Sacked last week in favour of a 42-year-old Spaniard who has never played professional football and whose only two proper managerial roles have been unremarkable stints with Reading and Hull City, getting sacked by the latter. But with a name like Rubén Sellés Salvador, he must be brilliant right? I mean, you can’t have that many accents in your name and not be some sort of managerial genius, can you? Isn’t that how football works? British boss out, foreign boss in. It’s depressing when you watch it happen at other clubs. When it happens at your own, its heartbreaking. Boys being men England’s under-19s have got some balls. The young Lions were 5-1 down to Germany in the European Championships and facing a very likely early elimination from a tournament they won just a few years ago. But those boys are made of sterner stuff and, quite incredibly, fought back to secure a draw and keep qualification from the group stage in their own hands. With 38 minutes left they pulled one back, and that opened the floodgates with another three goals in the next 10 minutes. They didn’t manage to go on and find a winner, which is a shame, but that doesn’t detract from the magnitude of their never-say-die spirit. I can’t help feeling that the grown-up England team could take a leaf or two out of the kids’ book – I wouldn’t trust Thomas Tuchel’s team to come back from 1-0 down with 89 minutes left... E-mail: Jamescalvertmalta@gmail.com X: @Maltablade