Dixon: What the foreigners didn’t understand

Former Arsenal defender Lee Dixon has revealed that the foreign players who joined Arsenal could not understand the distinct ‘British’ tradition of the Boxing Day fixture.

Whilst the rest of Europe get a break during the Christmas period, the Premier League piles up the matches with teams commonly playing 3 games in 10 days.

The British players loved the intensity and frequency of the matches, and Dixon for one hopes that a winter break is never enforced in the English and Scottish leagues.

Dixon said: “I think Christmas is a great time of year for footballers. You can’t beat the special atmosphere of a Boxing Day fixture, there’s simply nothing like it.

“People talk about having a winter break but what if you get some terrible weather just before it, like we had this year? We’d be having four weeks off instead of two.

“Christmas is a headache for managers, who have to juggle their squads and try to strike a balance between making changes but also putting out a strong enough team to get a result.

“Some foreign players, when they arrive in English football, find it hard to adjust. When Patrick Vieira and the other French lads came to Arsenal we told them: "You know the amount of games we play normally? Well, double that over Christmas." They couldn’t quite understand it.

“There’s something very British about playing football over Christmas. Most people get the time off so working makes you feel special. It’s nothing important like nurses, doctors, emergency services, or the armed forces, but you do feel different.

“It’s brilliant. And although I can now eat and drink as much as I like over the festive period, I do miss playing. I hope they never change it.”