Man cannot live on food alone. Ok, maybe he can, actually. But he also needs other things to obsess about. Often he needs many. But one can suffice. If its football.

And for some reason, far away from England and the Premier League, I feel a little ‘something’ for today’s football. Something that’s been missing since the season started. A new beginning. A reincarnation. A resurrection. A little fluttering deep down. Maybe just last night’s sushi coming back to haunt me, but I think not.

Because today is the first day of the rest of our season. And its a big day. With a very big match. Very big indeed.

Spurs are playing at Stoke.

But otherwise, there is one match that truly captures the imagination. A match so vast in its potential that on my downloaded paper today I noticed that it made it into the main paper as well as dominating the sports pages.

The Manchester derby. Oooohhhhhh.

Normally it would slot into the ‘who gives a shit’ category; the battle for some northern supremacy battle that leaves me cold. Will the Gallaghers be victorious in their light blue tosser hats or will the Reds from Esher, Dorset, Balham and Pnom Penh win the bragging rights for the day?

Yet today this battle is of interest to all. In no small part because it represents the end point of the cynical manipulation of our once noble game, as the 22 players starting are, collectively, the most expensive anywhere ever at £700 million between them. Personally I value each of Harry Kane’s testicles at more than that, but I don’t make the market.

So which bunch of over-priced, over-payed mega-stars will work out how to play sufficiently well as a team to overcome the other? Or, way more interestingly, which massively over-priced, over-payed, over-hyped manager will get his unmanageable bunch of super-egos to coalesce into the Barcelona or Real Madrid of their individual pasts?

Because really, this match isn’t about Pogba and Ibrahimavic, De Bruyne or Sterling, its about Pep Guardiola and Jose Morinho. THE two managers of their day. They hated each other’s teams in Spain and will continue that over here. That’s healthy. But its also a clash of styles. Guardiola’s possession football obsession against the very pragmatic, park-a-bus-if-neccessary style of the Portuguezer.

Its intriguing, its tantalising and, despite my personal desire for both teams to get relegated this year, it’ll be fascinating.

Shabbat Shalom, as we say in Israel

A xxxx