Month: July 2021

To heavily paraphrase Douglas Adams’ philosophers, football may OR MAY NOT be coming home.

I’m not a football fan (don’t turn away in disgust if you are, there’s a “but” coming). It’s not due to any childhood trauma, I certainly wasn’t scarred for life by being picked last in PE. Quite the reverse. When you’re picked last, as long as you end the lesson upright and without having injured yourself, you’ve done all that was expected of you – whereas if you’re picked first, I’m assuming there’s huge pressure to actually score some goals or something.

The first major football event I can recall is the 1978 World Cup, but only because it was the first time Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was on TV (presumably up against some big match on ‘the other side’). The BBC coverage that year had a catchy theme tune which was available, in a general sense, at all good record stockists; and available, in a much more specific sense, at my grandparents’ house where my brother and I proceeded to play the life out of it one holiday.

The 1982 World Cup holds only the memory of getting a free sticker album (love a sticker album); and I think the same was true of 1986, although the main thing I remember is feeling so ill one evening that I was unable to summon up the energy to get off the sofa, and sat (or rather, lay) through an entire match in which the French team, in yellow and blue, ran rings around… well, whoever they were playing.

Having established my woeful credentials, then, and to recap, I’m not a football fan.

BUT (!) I accept that it does unquestionably have a unifying effect. Yes of course there are some idiots – just as soccer in the 1980s threatened to be terminally tarred with the hooligan brush because of a tiny minority who were in it for the violence, so now there’s a tiny minority booing other teams and clearly just in it for the cowardly and anonymous xenophobia.

Away from that idiot faction though, it brings people together in some inexplicable way, uniting vastly disparate people in a common cause. Maybe if you’re a ‘proper’, ‘breathe it, sleep it, live it’ sort of fan, you may not be so pleased about that? Do they resent the sudden influx of new, ‘fairweather’ fans?

I hope it’s not like that – I like to think any new converts are welcomed with open arms, in a ‘the more the merrier’ sort of spirit. And it delights me that it’s still possible for our old friend television to get twenty-three million people watching and experiencing the same thing at the same time.

On the other hand, what really annoys me are the people who don’t like it but who feel the need to moan about it. Whenever the Olympics or the World Cup or any major event takes up a huge amount of airtime, there are always people who seem surprised that it’s happening, and object to it being on their TVs. I can’t abide people so determined to ruin the enjoyment of others, just because they don’t like something. Hopefully, on this occasion, even ‘that sort’ might accept, just this once, that England being in the final is a little bit special.

And, again hopefully it’ll be a good game. Some matches have a good result but are very dull; while others, regardless of the outcome, make for a satisfying and entertaining watch. I’ve never really thought about it until now but I guess if you’re a real football fanatic you’ll happily rewatch old games, even when you’ve seen them before. Personally I think that’s a bit silly (says he, sitting down to watch 1967’s Tomb of the Cybermen for a sixth time) but if that’s what you’re into, I hope this final meets that expectation, of being not just exciting tomorrow but a thrill to relive for years to come.

After all, that’s what it’s all about really isn’t it, playing a good game. It’s not the winning that counts, it’s the taking part.

Although… it would be nice to win, wouldn’t it!