Why am I a football
supporter?
Why am I a
season-ticket-carrying, Arsenal-tattoo’ed, former fanzine –contributing,
Hornbey-esque pilgrim to a particular square of partially-authentic grass upon
which eleven men in the iconic colours of red with white sleeves ply their
trade?
Perhaps it’s the
history. Emerging originally from the
grimy urban squalor of Industrial Victorian Britain, football rewrote itself a
much more glamorous history in 1992 when the Premiership was born. I love immersing myself in the infinite data
available on everything post-1992 that lets me thank SKY for granting me appropriately-priced
access to every kick of the ball by every one of the Premiership’s greatest
ever whatevers; and whatever they are great for, it’s something greater than
the so-called great players of the time before the Premiership, when football
was slow and hardly on telly and watched by hooligans and poor folk.
Perhaps it’s the sense of
community. When I stroll along the
street to Arsenal, via a car-journey and train ride, walking side-by-side with
other local fans from the immediate global vicinity of North London, Hertfordshire,
Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire, Berkshire, King’s Lynn and South East Asia, I
feel that I am amongst family. When I
look around me inside the stadium, I am warmed by the diversity of the
audience, a sea of faces that truly reflects the richness of our society. Everybody is welcome, except a few gays and
Muslims and the economically disenfranchised lower classes. And together, we share football. The friendly banter between rival fans that
only spills over into brutal hatred and prejudice from a tiny minority of
intimidating evolutionary throw-backs who attend ubiquitously and charm a
larger group into participating in their bile.
Perhaps it’s the
sportsmanship. The way in which two sets
of competing athletes make such bold sacrifices in order to win. These might be sacrifices of integrity and
fairplay, but at the end of the day, like, obviously, you know, they all shake
hands with those who have cheated and dived and feigned injury and moaned and
argued with officials and exchanged abuse with the crowd and spat and thrown
water bottles around for some urchin to collect up.
Perhaps it is the
competitiveness of it. The excitement of
an underdog winning an FA Cup every two decades. The mystery of whether the richest team will
win the league, or if the 2nd or 3rd richest will do it
this year. The joy of watching talent
nurtured and developed to the benefit of a club who can then sell that player
to someone who does win trophies and thus avoid administration and bankruptcy.
Perhaps it is the enormity
of the sport. The media coverage that
saturates the internet and TV channels with minute-by-minute news about who
said what about whom and what that might suggest could happen in terms of
transfers or not; every quote by a source, real or spuriously anonymous, is
seized upon and lauded like a Churchillian utterance in terms of significance
and profundity.
Perhaps it is the
unparalleled entertainment. Where else
other than a gig, the theatre, a restaurant, the local park, a social
gathering, the cinema, an art gallery, a museum or any other sport can you get
such entertainment for half the price?
And the amenities are something else.
As long as you’re not a woman and therefore not really expected to
attend football in large numbers, then you can enjoy tiled toilets with troughs
that are thirty feet long with minimal queuing.
And should you be hungry at 3pm on a Saturday afternoon - which many
people are because it is 2 hours after lunch and 3 before tea and your brain is
conditioned into thinking it needs additional sustenance – then you may access
a limited range of just about affordable beverages and hot snacks, which amount
to a small fraction of the cost of your ticket.
Like maybe only 1/10. (I love a £7
slither of pizza when I just paid £70 for 90 minutes of being outclassed by Man
United.)
Perhaps it is the only
place where I can be myself. As a casually-racist,
homophobic, middle-income, financially wasteful, indiscriminating consumer of
anything put in front of me; a man with a need to verbalise unselfconsciously his
own internal angst and psychological damage in the form of overt affectations
of passion that translate in real terms into aggressive and abusive obscenity;
an inherently biased, unreasonable and blind-to-reality protester of every vice
demonstrated by a rival but deliberately overlooked in my own team and
behaviour; and a tireless customer of an exploitative business that kids me
into thinking that my support is valued; then yes, at football I can truly be myself.
