The Community Shield has been called a glorified friendly but what is it worth to the winners?
It has been 61 days since Liverpool lifted the European Cup in Madrid and this weekend the wait for club football to return will be over. August has arrived, the sun is shining and on Sunday we’re heading back to Wembley. It can only mean one thing: the Community Shield.
The traditional curtain-raiser to a new top-flight campaign is widely seen as a glorified friendly, but does the early-season silverware hold any long-term value for the winners?
This year’s edition, which usually pits the Premier League winner against the FA Cup winner, sees domestic treble winners and current holders Manchester City face league runners-up Liverpool.
Both are anticipated to be the main contenders for major honours once again this season, and even if there is little more on the line than bragging rights, it is certainly a game that both sides would rather win than lose.
It also presents an opportunity to start the season on a positive note and to instil or maintain a winning mentality. It is a tactic that Jose Mourinho has been particularly fond of over the years, claiming multiple Community Shields and League Cups as stepping stones on the route to bigger honours.
Manchester City’s similar success under Pep Guardiola, winning this fixture last year on the back of a domestic double before sweeping all three English trophies, suggests he favours the same ethos. Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp, meanwhile, last week balked at talk of the match being a meaningless friendly.
Reflecting on City’s treble, Kyle Walker last week noted that his side “won three trophies and the Community Shield” – implying what many fans have come to believe, that the prize does not qualify as a trophy.
Yet at the same time, it was worth mentioning. The victory ensured there was no let-up on their domestic dominance and may have helped to propel them to that unprecedented trophy haul. Or perhaps winning it was merely a consequence of their desire to win every single game.
While winning adds another notch to the belt of those involved, the Community Shield has proven itself to be an unreliable predictor of success for the season.
City became the first team since Manchester United in 2010-11 to win the fixture and then go on to lift the Premier League trophy.
In fact, on only six occasions in the last 20 years has that happened, with nine Community Shield winners during that period failing to collect any other silverware during the subsequent season – a fate Liverpool suffered on the two instances they won it.
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Sir Alex Ferguson’s United are one of the standout teams to go on and claim major honours in the wake of a Community Shield victory, winning it in 2007, 2008 and 2010, before claiming the Premier League in each campaign, as well as a Champions League during the 2007-08 campaign.
That success is nothing like guaranteed, though. If anything, winning the Community Shield seems to be just as much a result of continued success in other competitions as it is a prerequisite for further glory in an upcoming season.
So as the Premier League champions go up against the Champions League winners, whoever wins on Sunday, the losers need not be unduly deterred as they go in search of each other’s crowns.