My Favourite Day of the Year

For people that are not fond of football or just don't follow it as much as most people, today will be like any other day of summer to them. Depending on where you are reading this the sun might well be shining and whatever you had planned for today will invariably have been pretty common - it's only a Wednesday after all. The thing is however, that for football fans across the globe and particularly in Britain, this day carries a lot of significance: it is (of course) transfer deadline day. I'm writing this post at about 5pm on the 31st August 2011 and it's killing me that I'm away from the TV at the moment. There are very few days like this that will capture the imagination of so many people and I, unashamedly, can admit that it is my favourite day of the year.

I can't believe that I'm just about to write this but I know that I have readers that won't have a clue what I'm talking about so here is a short explanation. Basically there is are two transfer windows every year (when teams can buy and sell players): one in the summer and one in January. Normally the January window is a bit dull although there have been a couple of exciting ones in the last few years. The summer window though is open from the start of July (roughly) until the 31st August and is the primary time when teams do their trading. It will start off fairly quickly with teams wanting to get deals done before their pre-season training starts, then it'll slow down and slowly build back up to the last day of the window (today, oh what a beautiful day!) in which there are more deals than in the whole of the window put together. There are a multitude of reasons why teams wait until the last minute but I won't go into them but all of the above adds up to excitement, rumours, good deals, bad deals and everything else in between - I just love it and so do many millions of people across the country as well.

As I'm writing this I've got the live Sky Sports transfer feed open in another tab which is being checked every 5 minutes or so and I've spend about 4 or 5 hours this morning watching the coverage on Sky Sports News. The window officially closes at 11pm tonight and I'll be glued to it right up until I can't keep my eyes open any more. So why, I hear all of you football haters ask, are there so many people glued to it? Well simply put, it's exciting for a football fan. People that only have a passing interest in the game or just don't like football at all are not expected to understand why today is such an important day in the football calendar. Today along with the last day of the January window are two of the most important non-football days in the footballing calendar because they provide good quality TV and what happens throughout the course of the day could (and probably will) have a bearing on the season itself. On average I'll watch about 3 or 4 games of football a week this season (sometimes up to 8 or 9 if it's a European week) but this is a different dimension to the game that I just love.

So as I finish up here whilst I keep one ear to the latest transfer news I'm sure there are a few people who now think I'm boring. By the end of the day I'll have spend more than 10 hours watching the close of the transfer window unfold and if you add that to the time I've spent keeping an eye on it for the whole summer it probably adds up to nearly a whole day. But the thing I would ask someone who calls me boring is this: what have you done today that has been so much better? Was it something that is a long-standing passion of yours or did you sit for most of it doing nothing? Well tomorrow I'll be able to look back on today and say that I spent a day doing something that I love doing and something that I'll love doing for my whole life. I live and breath football - it is my biggest passion in life - and anyone that thinks that I'm boring for that well frankly I think they are as well for not liking football.

Anyway I best get back to the news tickers and the TV coverage in case I miss something big. Who am I kidding? I never miss a thing on deadline day!

Thanks for reading,

Martin