Blue Is the colour... (But the White away strip will do just nicely...) (Football in General)

Name: NassaHarrabean

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Product:	Football in General
Date:	28/08/01 (99 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: It's Football.

Disadvantages: It's an obsession.

Football. One word. Football. Football, football, football. Sheesh, how can one single word mean so many things, and bring so much joy and sorrow and love and excitement. Football’s great, you see. I love football. 99% of the time, when I’m not thinking about my children (which, really is, a huge amount of the time), I’m thinking about football. I’m thinking about Chelsea and Stamford Bridge, and I’m hating thinking about it, because I should be thinking about other things, but I can’t, because football’s always there creeping back into my mind.

I hate it. It’s an obsession. It’s my life. The season starts too early, always, always when the Cricket’s still on, and even if I want to see the cricket – I can’t help but watch the football instead. It’s always been that way. My earliest memories all are based around football somehow: my twin brother and I kicking a ball around in the back garden with my Dad; waiting at the window for my Dad to come home with his friends (usually smelling of drink), happy and content after being at a game of football. Since I was little, I’ve loved it, a lot of the time, not because of the ‘beautiful game’, but because of how it effects people. It’s amazing, you see people, when their team goes down, or when their team goes up a league, it’s amazing – the tears of joy, or sadness. It’s unbelievable. My wife, pity her, supports Manchester United, in the same way I support Chelsea (and boy, do I support them), and I’ve never seen her the way she was when Manchester United won the European Cup in 1999, she was hysterical with anger (because of the German’s lead) and then suddenly hysterical with Joy (because of the two goals), and it was amazing.

I’m in Japan at the moment. And it’s horrible really – you don’t see football as much as you do in London, or in England in g
eneral. It’s awful – I’m sitting here writing this, at eight o’clock at night, when generally, at this time, I would be watching football, though I can’t, because there’s NO football really, compared to the amount in Europe. And it’s not just with the big teams on TV – here, you rarely see any kids kicking a ball about, or wearing football shirts, or anything, because they just haven’t got the same culture as us.

A lot of the time – I do think “What is the point in football”?

The ‘POINT’, if anything, isn’t just the game – it isn’t just watching a ball being banged into the back of the goalkeeper’s net, it isn’t just seeing someone do a magnificent run down the wing, it isn’t just hearing the crunch of a tackle, or a foot hitting a ball during a free kick. Although that’s what it may seem like, and don’t get me wrong, because I love all that, it isn’t. It’s being there. It’s seeing the fans faces, and seeing the players after scoring a goal, it’s seeing the celebrations, it’s seeing the sorrow, it’s seeing the bewilderment on the faces of young kids at their first match, it's hearing the commentators voices - or reading the papers or the websites when they've got a great new brilliant story, it’s seeing everything. You know – the involvement. It’s feeling the atmosphere.

I would have loved to have been a footballer – I was quite good, and was offered trials with Arsenal when I was fourteen, but much to the amazement of many people, I didn’t take it – because it was Arsenal. All I ever wanted, right from the start – was Chelsea – it was the blue shirt.

The problem with football, is it’s image. You see a lot of the time, the pictures that are shown, are tough men with clenched fists and tightly drawn fac
es – and I hate that – I hate how people think that all football supporters are like that, because they’re not. It’s to do with the hooliganism thing, I’ve known people, who’ve seen the pictures of football fans throwing chairs around who have just assumed that ALL football fans are like that – it is not true. Football IS Football, and not hooliganism.

That’s it, I suppose. I’m not sure if you’ll find it Very Useful – because I just wanted to make that one point clear (not about the hooliganism – because there’s another section about that), about the passion and love that goes into the game, and not just the big bucks. The same passion and love goes into the teams that aren’t so big – read 'Celandine’s' crowned opinion on Football for example, that shows it well. I love it football, I guess, and I’m never going to escape loving it.

[Steven Harrasham].

**Oh yeh, and did Bolton REALLY beat Liverpool? I think the BBC Sports website must be lying to me.

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