The Community Shield in recent years has meant little more to clubs and managers than an excellent opportunity to throw fantasy football players off the selection scent by playing a bunch of squad players who are unlikely to play any meaningful part in the season to come.
This time around Sir Alex Ferguson even went as far as to admit that he would use the game to play the players lacking in match fitness, sending keen followers into aggressive debates about whether they weren’t up to fitness yet because they were not in his plans, or because he knew he wanted to showcase them in a cup final.
The thing is though, squad players are hopelessly deluded. Even with the introduction of seven substitutes into the English Premier League this season, there are not many understudies at major clubs who can have realistic hopes of making a first team place their own at any point. Unless you are the young understudy to an aging hero (a Nani to a Giggs), the sale of the players ahead of you is only likely to finance the purchase of a better one; clubs very rarely promote a reserve into the first team by choice after good performances in the reserves and training.
Jermain Defoe was at Spurs for years, always telling himself he was good enough to play for them, but always second choice behind Robbie Keane. Clinical finishing and constant statements that he wanted to stay and fight for his place wasn’t enough to stop the Spurs board spending over £15 million on Darren Bent, and when he inevitably bit the bullet and left, Defoe showed the league what any West Ham fan could have told you years ago: the boy is a natural goal scorer. As happy as he must be on the south coast, there must be part of him which wishes Keane had just left that 6 months earlier.
With the exception Mathieu Flamini at Arsenal, it is very rare that squad players can ever hope for more than Defoe had. Bobby Zamora left West Ham recently knowing he had permanently been in the pecking order behind Dean Ashton after the striker’s £7.5 million transfer, but his comments from the Fulham training ground left fans in no uncertain terms that he didn’t rate Ashton as a better player than him. That sort of confidence (even if misplaced) is necessary in any squad player who wants to keep on his toes.
It’s a thankless task though. Either you stay for years as Defoe did – underrated, underused and called a mercenary who is only there for the money, or you leave, as Steve Sidwell did, Tal Ben Haim did and Lassan Diarra did; in essence, you are a failure. One way you’re nobody and undervalued by the fans, and the other you’re a reject.
Maybe players like Thierry Henry should have valued their time as an automatic starter a bit more.
