Football, Soccer, Kick Ball, Leather-sack-wap-about. The beautiful game has many names, many teams and many, many rules. Countless confusing terms, opinions and bizarre eccentricities. So with this new update, to this brilliant blog, I aim to educate, inform and enlighten the unknowing so that they may converse, understand and enjoy football with the masses. So with out further hesitation or procrastination here we go:
FOOTBALL!
1.a. You must support one* team, no matter how neutral you claim to be. You get to choose one team in all of the Leagues, you get bonus points for teams in the lower, less glamourus levels of professional football. However with those bonus credits, you also lose the thrills of watching your team play regularly on TV and a better standard of football. Swings and roundabouts.
*You may eventually have a second team, that you choose to support on occasion as well, but that’s an intermediate level of knowledge that we will reach at another date.
*-Super Tip-* You don’t want to be that wanker in the pub watching the game who claims he supports neither team playing, who just enjoys watching football, who says that immortal douche bag line “No matter what the score is, football is the real winner”. So Pick a team, mention it to a mate at the start of the 90′ minutes and egg them on. The whole viewing experience will be improved massively by this choice.
1.b. You can counter claim supporting one of the 2 teams playing, by hating one of them instead, thus enjoying their defeat or cursing their unfairly obtained victory.
2. Don’t bother buying a replica shirt*. They are stupidly expensive, horribly made, always out of fashion and replaced within a year by a whole new, slightly different kit. Nothing says part time supporter or full time fool like a 2 year old Man Utd shirt. Instead just invest in a scarf. It actually keeps you warm, plus if you manage to get to a real “mud & pies” game you can wave it above your head like a loon.
3. I’m going to use a personal example this one: A good friend of mine, recently moved to the country, decided that football is such a prevalent part of our society that to integrate properly he must support a team. Logically he chose a team which were fairly successful while also having some persoanl attachment too, he chose Tottenham Hotspur.
When he started to support it was a point in time when they were being put in that “Top 4” bracket, aka a team which may win the league. He was a happy fan. They were beating teams left right and centre, had great young players and a reliable clever manager. Things have changed in 2 years. Spurs are no longer a top 4 team, lacking the investment of Manchester City and Liverpool, they have dropped behind, quite a way behind.