5 tips to help you survive silly season

Soccer’s offseason — commonly known as “silly season” — is the best.

But on the other hand, it’s also the worst. The worst because it’s so engrossing that it can literally take over your life. It might distract you from something small, like accidentally skipping dinner because you’re watching Ezequiel Barco YouTube compilations. Or it could cause more deep-seeded damage, like the emotional scarring caused by missing your kid’s goal at the rec soccer game because you were researching requirements for green cards on your phone.

Whatever is ailing you, just remember that we all have our struggles. Though some lucky people are diagnosed as “functional,” just remember that you are not alone in this fight. Here are 5 things you can do to help ease your addiction symptoms while making sure you are staying up to date on Arthur Blank’s private jet status.

Know how to spot bogus reports

So here’s the thing. The internet is a place where news outlets receive a monetary exchange for your click. Therefore, these sites will go to extreme lengths to get said click. They’d even compromise their journalistic integrity (shocker) to get people like you to visit the site. One rule of thumb is to never take a non-bylined/anonymous report at face value (or at any value at all). Any journalist worth his weight in salt will put his/her name to what they write. Especially if they have a source that they believe to be legit.

Pro tip: If it’s an international transfer that includes a “player swap,” it’s 100% BS.

Don’t try to quit cold turkey

It’s incredibly hard to quit silly season cold turkey. If you try, a day or two will pass before you find yourself leaving the bedroom for “a midnight snack,” which will undoubtedly include 2+ hours perusing websites in foreign languages and trying to piece together translations like “the words spoken with Atlanta are freezada.”

Keep your phone away from the bed

Pretty standard. We all know this is commonly told to us by doctors, the Livestrong website, etc. It’s supposedly not good for your eyeballs or something like that. But for those of you with significant others, not only is it a health hazard, it’s unbecoming. You are infected with this disease — don’t allow its effects to spread to the ones you love.

Go play some soccer irl

Are you able to join a league? Do it? Do you have friends and a ball to go for a kickabout at the park? Do it. Are you friendless, but have a ball you can kick against a wall? Do it. Do you own a soccerball? If not, buy one. Make one. Do whatever it takes to get out of the house and get some fresh air. Channel your inner Tata and eat the grass!

Let other people do the dirty work for you

As we’ve covered, there are plenty of degenerates out there. You don’t want to become one of them. Instead of getting sucked into their world, let them do the work for you. Visit this site, visit the Atlanta United reddit page, visit the AJC. If you’re going to track Atlanta United transfer rumors, at least make life a little easier on yourself by letting other people do the digging, while you can just scan the findings.