A lot has been made of the boredom experienced by the England players at their remote training camp in the last ten days and journalists have bemoaned the strict regime that includes training, resting and eating, but little else.
However, you do wonder whether it really is the players who have found this routine mundane or the reporters. After all, there is only a limited amount you can say about a group of men jogging around a football pitch and eating a healthy balance of carbohydrates and protein, so the journalists have had to work extra hard to fill their papers and endless stream of rolling 24-hour news.
With the wives and girlfriends back on the scene, for a short time at least, journalists can put their feet up safe in the knowledge that, in the absence of anything to say, at least they can include a gratuitous photo of a glamorous spouse with a Gucci handbag.
And the good news doesn’t stop there for the tabloids. England are playing Germany at the weekend, which means that for the next four days they don’t need to write anything new at all. They have a massive back catalogue of headlines, puns and jingoistic stories about the two nations at their disposal and you can bet that we are going to see most of them again before 3pm on Sunday.
Herr we go again.
