An indecent six days after the Champions League final theoretically closed the 2019-20 season, 2020-21’s curtain will be traditionally raised this weekend when Liverpool face Arsenal in the Community Shield.
It all still feels pretty absurd that we’ve barely had time to breathe from the end of one season before the next one starts. In some ways, it’s pretty comforting that this game is happening in August, roughly the time it is supposed to happen, when everything else in the world is upside down.
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But given the state of things, you wonder what the point of it is. The Community Shield is usually an amuse-bouche — not even really a starter — to the season, which in normal times we tend to greet with some enthusiasm because of what has come before it: the barren, aching, intolerable three-month void without any proper domestic men’s football, a period known to the rest of the world as “the summer”.
That doesn’t apply now. The Premier League season ended five weeks ago, we’ve just enjoyed the men’s European trophy bonanza in Germany and Portugal and the last week has seen Lyon continue their relentless march to absolute domination in the women’s Champions League.
So is it less relevant than ever now? “It’s not an ideal moment to play this final,” enthused Mikel Arteta this week, before switching to professional mode. “But the players are motivated, it’s another opportunity to win a trophy and we will go for it.”
It is, of course, worth returning to the question of where the Community Shield ranks historically. “I have never included extras like the Charity Shield and the European Super Cup,” wrote Sir Alex Ferguson in his autobiography, “because they are won with a single victory.” It is tempting, when discussing the merit or otherwise of competitions, to take the word of the most decorated manager in English football history.
Still, when you’ve won 16 league titles, 14 domestic cups and four European trophies, you can afford not to count a few of which you aren’t quite as proud. That said, when the great scorer comes to mark Pep Guardiola’s name, he will definitely want his two Community Shields to be included in his tally. “In Spain and Germany it’s important,” he said in 2019, when a “quintuple” was on for City.
“We have won two titles this season and have three to play (for) but everyone says one. Why play if it doesn’t count? We could have longer holidays.”Jurgen Klopp too. “A pre-season friendly? Is that how you see it in this country?” he said before last year’s edition. “I don’t know why people play this competition if it means nothing. Why not cancel it then? It’s a final. This is the first time I’ve realised nobody (here) sees it like that.”
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Klopp reiterated his point ahead of Saturday’s encounter. “It’s not a test game, it’s not a friendly, it’s a proper game. So we will try whatever we can. What other people make of it I don’t know. I remember last season everyone told me that the Club World Cup was nothing and that I shouldn’t even consider going. But I can tell you that when we won it, it felt really exceptional for us and for our supporters. There wasn’t one second when I thought, ‘Oh, what do other people think about it?’
“This is our first chance (to win a trophy this season) and we really want it. That doesn’t mean that we get it but it means we’ll give everything to have a chance and that’s what we’ve been working on. Nothing else. What it means to other people or not I couldn’t be really bothered about. It’s a final, it’s Wembley, let’s give it a try.” And Claudio Ranieri was very much of the same opinion in 2016. “Why do you ask this question, a friendly?” he said. “When is the Community Shield a friendly? Of course, we will be at the maximum and Manchester United will be at their maximum. The two teams want to win. I am very excited.”
Jose Mourinho has pretty much the same relationship with these games as he does everything else: which is to say when it suits him, it’s a legitimate trophy but when it doesn’t, it isn’t. We all recall his saucer-eyed urging to his Manchester United players at the end of the 2017 Europa League final, urging them to lift three fingers to celebrate the three trophies they had won that year: the Europa League, the League Cup and, hang on, what’s the other one? He doesn’t mean… he isn’t including… oh, he is.
But it didn’t take intimate knowledge of his history to recall that he had used Rafa Benitez winning the Italian Super Cup, after succeeding him at Inter, to belittle his old foe. “I expected at least a thank you for the success that I gave him,” Mourinho said, his logic being that it was he who effectively “qualified” Benitez’s team via the previous season’s feats, thus the trophy was basically his.
How do managers approach these games? Harry Redknapp managed Portsmouth in the 2008 edition. “It’s the most important pre-season game that you have,” he says, theoretically enthusiastic about the match but unintentionally putting it only a small step above the Emirates Cup. “You go and play other pre-season games and go on a trip away, but that still would be the game you put your best team out in.”
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Historically, it has never really been taken seriously. Indeed, there have been many examples down the years when the intended participants simply couldn’t be bothered. After Arsenal won the double in 1971, they opted to play a friendly against Feyenoord in Rotterdam instead of the Charity Shield — although that was partly in protest against the FA for putting pressure on them in the previous season to cancel a friendly to keep their players free for the Home Internationals. In their place stepped Liverpool (defeated FA Cup finalists) and, for reasons that have never really been explained, Second Division champions Leicester City.
The following year, league champions Derby County and FA Cup winners Leeds United politely declined, replaced by Manchester City (fourth place in the top tier) and Aston Villa (Third Division winners), while City were invited back to defend their title the following year when Liverpool (title winners) and Sunderland (FA Cup winners) said thanks but no thanks, and were defeated 1-0 by Burnley (Second Division champions).
It was this collective three-year bunking off that convinced the FA to move the game to Wembley (it had previously been staged at the home ground of one team involved) to tempt the intended combatants back. Can you say that something is a viable, serious trophy if you have to put it on at a shiny venue to even get teams to show up? You’d be pretty annoyed if someone only agreed to attend your birthday drinks if they were held at The Rivoli Bar of The Ritz, rather than down your local.
And let’s not forget that on 11 occasions the shield has been shared. Again, is it a viable, competitive match if even the organisers essentially admit that they aren’t that bothered who wins? When they eventually did bring in a method of ensuring someone had to win in the early 1990s (a penalty shootout at the end of normal time) they didn’t explain it to the participants. “I thought the trophy was going to be shared,” said George Graham after the 1993 edition ended Arsenal 1-1 Manchester United. “I left the penalties up to the players.” David Seaman took one, missed and Arsenal lost.
Still, it’s very easy to be sniffy about a game at the national stadium, against one of the best teams in the land, as the opening act to the season, when you’ve never competed in it. Which probably brings us to the more nuanced answer of whether the Community Shield actually is a trophy: on a macro level, it could barely matter less, but on a micro level, between the two referee’s whistles, it matters a great deal.
“Once you’re out there, it’s a competition,” says Redknapp. “When you’re a professional player, you want to win. No one wants to play a game and lose, no matter what you’re playing. I played golf with my mate for three golf balls this morning, but it was life or death. I had a putt on the 18th from 18 inches… I was nervous as anything. Your competitive instincts take over: otherwise, why bother?”
Why bother indeed. Ultimately then, the Community Shield is as serious as you take it. But as the footballing world braces itself for what is gearing up to be the most chaotic and relentless season of all time, it will take every last ounce of Arsenal and Liverpool’s competitive spirit to make this year’s Community Shield feel like anything close to an actual trophy. Given the circumstances, it feels less serious and relevant than it has ever been.
(Photo: Richard Calver/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
