The World Cup hangover is painful, and making it hard to appreciate a wild club summer

The World Cup ran for a month and a day. But the World Cup lasted, ooh, at least a couple of extra months. There’s the run-up beforehand, a long shadow cast forwards over the end of the season, giving shade and depth to every injury, every dip and surge in form. Then, afterwards, comes the hangover.

The hangover. It hurts.

As Eddie Newton once observed, every action has an equal and opposite reaction. The energy poured into caring — really caring — about 64 games of football in 31 days is not conjured up from nothing. That stirring of the spirit you felt, as Morocco took on Iran? It was taken on credit, drawn forwards from the future. It must be paid for. It is being paid for right now.

Actual hangovers tend to make even the most fundamental human activities feel worthless: talking, thinking, moving. Similarly, the World Cup hangover reveals that the rituals and practices of the European preseason are located at a similar intersection of futility and inconvenience. Transfer rumours: a nagging headache. Big moves: an uninvited knock on the door. Friendlies: the appalling distance between couch and television control.

It’s a touch surreal, watching things happen and knowing that any other summer they’d be extremely energising. Liverpool have just spent more money on a goalkeeper than any other club in the history of the game, and … that’s probably a good idea. Well done them. Cristiano Ronaldo has moved from Real Madrid to Juventus, and … he’ll probably score loads of goals. Well done him. Interesting to see how they go in Europe.

And when it comes to the biggest European teams, these preseason tours are looking and feeling extremely preseason. There’s always a tension in these exercises: the value in taking teams to fans who might never otherwise get to see them, set against the deep cynicism of putting a big feathery hat on what are, at heart, training sessions and fitness work. Here, after the World Cup, with the World Cup players still missing, the hat is looking ragged and the feathers are drooping.

Perhaps there’s a therapeutic use for this malaise. Following top-level European football, and particularly the Premier League, is a frankly exhausting business. The churn of hype is relentless: everything is the most important thing ever, over and over again. But here, in the World Cup hangover, in the state of already being knackered, we discover that this is all contingent. We don’t have to go Full Premier League, just because the Premier League really wants us to.

This will all pass, of course. A couple of glasses of metaphorical water (the European Super Cup), a figurative banana (Jose Mourinho saying something tedious), some ibuprofen analogues (er, a new full-back?). A bit of a quiet sit down. As the deadlines approach — the start of the season, the close of the transfer window — things will start to take on their customary intensity.

But hangovers, every now and then, are great for a little perspective on the business of being alive. Even if you wouldn’t want to live like that your entire life. The post World Cup slump demonstrates that we can tap out if we have to, and so suggests that we can tap out if we want to. We can engage with football, and all the associated capering nonsense, on our own terms.

And if we decide that we really don’t have the energy to pretend that something matters, when it doesn’t, then that’s nobody’s business but our own. The game will still be there when we decide to open the curtains again. We can take all the time we need.