HURRAH! The Premier League season starts this weekend. It is only a month and three days since the final of the European Championships and yet the merry-go-round has already spun round and the season is kicking off once more.

But over the last month, we’ve been watching a different kind of sporting superstar at the Olympics.

Of people dedicated to their events, getting up at the crack of dawn to train for years with only a glimmer of a hope that for a moment at the Olympics that television will briefly notice them.

Although there are serious issues about drugs and indeed gender, most athletes competed in an admirable spirit: they were pleased just to be there, determined to do their best, but also urging others to go faster and higher.

And in those sports where there was some kind of an umpire, the decisions were accepted practically without question and the competitors immediately got back on with play.

Now compare that with the footballers whose praises we are going to be singing, and whose skills we are going to be debating, for the next nine months. They will go out to feign contact and injury, rolling around in agony to prove how hurt they are, in a bid to do down their opponent, even get him sent off, and they will harangue and bully the referee in the hope of gaining an advantage.

Imagine if Jurgen Klopp or Alex Ferguson had been in charge of a synchronised diving team. When the scores of Tom Daley and Noah Williams came up showing they were only going to get a silver medal, there would have been all sorts of poolside histrionics and expressions of dismay.

The Premier League is very exciting. It is compelling viewing, and it is good to have it back – but it would be even better if just a touch of the Olympian spirit rubbed off on it.