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INTERNATIONAL RESCUE

England renew the oldest rivalry in football when they take on Scotland on Friday, but does anyone really care about international football anymore?

The battle of the Auld Enemy might rekindle the passion of the fans for one game, but international football has gone stale with the Premier League and Champions League taking precedent for fans.

Football fans all get excited when the World Cup or European Championship finals come around every couple of years, but the endless ‘easy’ qualifiers has lost its appeal on supporters across the world.

Even then a lot of the games at major tournaments have been full of instantly forgettable matches and it is hard to remember when a major tournament caught your imagination.

To be fair England fans and Home Nations fans are among the most passionate in international football and England fans will again pack out Wembley on Friday despite the side’s embarrassing performances at Euro 2016.

Fans across the UK now fret when there is an international break as they will not get their fix of the Premier League and that has got to be a worry for the future of international football.

Gone are the days when international football was glamorous and the best players in the world were coming up against each other as we already see that in the Champions League.

The vast majority of people who watch international football don’t give them the same focus as watching a Premier League or European game and I am one of those myself.

I think the same can be said for the players as back in the day it was all about the pride of playing for your country, but nowadays some players struggle to show that desire like they do when they are playing at the highest level for their clubs.

In the majority of the qualifiers against the so-called lesser nations the players certainly aren’t going to contest matches that are of a better standard than the Premier League or the Champions League and that makes it hard for the best players to motivate themselves.

Some of the qualifiers are just not competitive and that was illustrated in the last international break when San Marino scored only their third goal since 2008 in the defeat to Norway, Andorra scored their first goal in over a year against Switzerland and Gibraltar held out for all of eight seconds before conceding to Belgium.

Some of the games on paper look boring and inevitably they do end up boring as a number of the matches are simply just mismatches.

The decline in international can be seen in that standards need to be improved as football is all about rivalry and there is no rivalry when your nation is coming up against countries who have little or no footballing heritage.

Nobody wants to watch football that is not competitive, while club managers hate the international break and it is fair to say some of the players do not particularly like them either.

Players are also more reluctant than ever to put their country before their club as they know injury on international duty could seriously jeopardise their places in the starting XI of their clubs when they return from international duty.

The timing of the international calendar does not help things as in the middle of a busy, punishing domestic season we have the demands of international duty placed on already exhausted players a lot of the time for meaningless friendly fixtures.

International football in all its formats needs to change and until that happens it will remain in the doldrums and the shadows of the domestic game.

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