Pre-season hype is football's biggest seasonal delusion
It is July 18, 2026. The grass is freshly cut, the sun is shining, and every single fan base on the planet has decided that their team is winning the league. We are currently rotting in that specific purgatory between real football and the annual tradition of overanalyzing training exercises. It is the time of year when a friendly win over a lower-league side turns into a delusional manifesto about European qualification.
Take the recent buzz surrounding Nottingham Forest beating Notts County under Oliver Glasner. I watched the clips. They looked crisp, sure, but playing against a side that is barely shaking off the rust is the footballing equivalent of beating a toddler at checkers and acting like you’ve just outsmarted Magnus Carlsen. Yet, the forums are currently overflowing with people writing essays about tactical shifts.
The believers versus the absolute realists
The enthusiasts are currently insufferable. They see a goal against a disorganized defensive line and start drafting tweets about how the manager has cracked the code. One user on a popular subreddit actually claimed that Newcastle’s recent start, where Joe Willock looked sharp, is a definitive indicator that the Magpies are going to challenge the top four. Willock is a great player, but drawing conclusions from a mid-July match is like predicting a marriage's success based on a first date at a drive-thru.
Then you have the cynics. These people are the backbone of any healthy community, providing the salt needed to season all that blind optimism. One frequent poster on a discord server noted that Sunderland putting five past York is a complete non-factor, stating, "If we win a trophy in May I'll care, but right now this is just a glorified practice session for players terrified of getting injured before the money games start." They aren't wrong, honestly.
The contrarians are the weirdest group of all, currently arguing that losing in pre-season is actually a secret blessing. They claim that winning too much makes teams complacent and that a 0-2 loss to a non-league side is "revealing the holes in the press early." It’s the kind of mental gymnastics that would win a gold medal at the Olympics if shifting goalposts was an official sport.
Why do we do this to ourselves?
We do it because the alternative is admitting that we have nothing to talk about until August. Every year, transfer sagas like the Palhinha situation at Bayern dominate the headlines because actual sport has been replaced by speculation and fitness drills. We want to believe that our club has finally found the balance, even when the opponent is playing a part-time accountant at left-back.
My take? Stop looking at the scorelines and start looking at the fitness levels of the wingers. If your team is running out of gas at the hour mark in these matches, you are in for a long winter. The teams actually looking structurally sound in these early tests, like what we saw when Glasner’s Forest squad grabbed their early win, are doing the dirty work that actually matters. Everyone else is just putting on a show for the highlights reel.
The obsession with pre-season results is a symptom of a fan base that has been starved of meaningful competition for exactly two months. It’s like eating a sandwich made entirely of bread and telling yourself it’s a Michelin-star meal just because you’re hungry. Enjoy the games for what they are: guys in training bibs trying not to pull a hamstring while the manager screams instructions that literally nobody will follow once the season kicks off with three points or a zero-point disaster on the opening weekend.
Ultimately, the skeptics have the stronger argument here. Football isn't won in July heatwaves against academy prospects or regional teams. It’s won in the trenches during the 90th minute of a rainy Tuesday night in November when your star striker is carrying a slight knock. Everything else is just noise. Drink your beer, enjoy the sun, and don’t buy a jersey with a new signing's name on it just yet. You will probably regret it by October when the real misery sets in.
