The new football season has been offered a simple challenge: Follow That! Its task is Olympian. With the glories of London 2012 so fresh in the memory it will be hard to get worked up about Reading against Stoke. How can the Premier League hope to reproduce a moment comparable to Mo Farah surging away from the field in the 5,000m to win his second gold medal or the roars of the crowd willing him on?
The advent of another football campaign less than a week after the closing ceremony at the Olympics has prompted many a critical sigh. So it's back to the diving, the dissent and the disagreeable language, the histrionics of the players and the humbug of losing managers. If London 2012 has left the nation a feelgood factor football can be relied on to dismiss this with a cynical wave.
Then again the Games, by holding the country in thrall for a fortnight, did manage to sideline the usual overhyped buildup to the season. This time football has returned almost as an afterthought. At least nobody should have grown weary of it before the kick-off. When Usain Bolt was in full cry who really cared about where Robin van Persie was going ?
Yet last season did leave a half-decent football legacy. There could not have been a better climax to the Premier League than that final afternoon when within the space of two or three minutes of stoppage time a title heading for Manchester United was snatched from them by Manchester City as Edin Dzeko and Sergio Agüero turned a looming defeat by Queens Park Rangers into a 3-2 win.
And Chelsea will re-enter the Champions League this season as holders, having eliminated Barcelona, the world's best team, in the semi-finals and then beaten Bayern Munich on their own ground in the final. All right Roberto Di Matteo's team gained few plaudits for artisitc impression having spent most of the time enveloping the opposition in a defence as dully efficient as an old army blanket. But it worked and Didier Drogba's coolly taken penalty which won the shootout in Munich was as fine a piece of theatre as anything that occurred in London 2012.
One of the best things about the Games was the friendly atmosphere at the venues and generosity of spirit that accompanied the events, whoever was winning. The British spectators might roar on Team GB but the warmth of their appreciation for other nations was in stark contrast to the routine booing of the opposition's anthem when England are playing football.
This is not going to go away. Football support will always divide on tribal lines. After England had won the World Cup in 1966 their West Ham trio of Bobby Moore, Geoff Hurst and Martin Peters became national icons but the following season it was not long before they were being booed by rival fans wanting to take them down a peg or two. "Bobby Moore, superstar, walks like a woman and wears a bra," they sang. Pathetic yet inevitable.
The game needs not another Respect campaign but one to encourage more self-respect. Too often good team performances are let down by the inability of players to control themselves. Chelsea's heroic stand at Camp Nou followed the dismissal of John Terry for a gormless foul that left them with 10 men against Lionel Messi et al. Manchester City's dramatic win over QPR was assisted by the departure of Rangers' Joey Barton, who was sent off fighting as he went.
Terry, cleared in court of racially abusing QPR's Anton Ferdinand, still faces action from the Football Association for using foul language. In the heat of the moment footballers are never going to say "Oh botheration" and leave it at that but the game could do worse then heed the most recent Olympians' good manners, win or lose.
After the 1948 Olympics in London aggregate league attendances the following season set a record of 41.2 million, which has never been beaten. Players were paid the equivalent of a factory wage without the overtime but enjoyed a better public standing than they do now.
Bradley Wiggins is worth millions but his self-effacing demeanour is reminiscent of the footballers of those days. If a Premier League footballer ever competed in the Tour de France he would have to ride a tandem to accommodate his agent.
