3 Things that Grind My Gears in Football
I’m back! The self-confessed serial moaner is here to share with you all the annoying aspects of the beautiful game that frankly make me want to throw up. Last time I shared my thoughts on international football, I was just breaking you in gently, today I’m in full on angry mode! Here are some of the things in the beautiful game that push my buttons.
1. Half and Half Scarves
So you follow a team, in fact, you don’t just follow them, they are your religion! Your mood through the week will be affected by Saturday’s result. A win and it’s all rainbows and sunshine. A loss and you have a constant raincloud following you around and it feels like a small part of you is grieving.
So this is why I cannot get my head around half and half scarves. What person in their right mind would destroy a perfectly good scarf by placing another club’s emblem on it? I can’t imagine many Kopites proudly wearing a Liverpool/Manchester mash up, can you?
2. So-Called Experts with Verbal Diarrhoea
Do you ever see someone at work and think “I could do that!”? I certainly do when I watch TV and the football is on and the commentator is endlessly spouting nonsense. Now I am willing to accept that there is a degree of skill involved. I’m even prepared to accept that a lot of research goes into their jobs. But a lot of time I think the only qualifications needed are an A level in clichés and lack of a filter between the brain and the mouth. Not convinced? Let’s have a few examples.
“He’s got a lot of self-belief in himself” – GRAHAM BEECROFT (as opposed to???)
“And with 4 minutes gone, the score is already 0-0.” – IAN DARK (wonder what it was after 3 minutes?)
“Strangely, in slow motion replay, the ball seemed to hang in the air for even longer.” – DAVID ACFIELD (how strange David!)
“What will you do when you leave football, Jack — will you stay in football?” – STUART HALL (mess with his head Jack and say “neither”).
“If you closed your eyes, you couldn’t tell the difference between the two sides” – PHIL BROWN
3. Lack of 3pm Matches on the Box
This is one of the most frustrating things in football! If I lived in Spain, Italy, India, Jamaica, probably even Mars, I could watch football at 3pm, with a beer, on my comfy armchair. But no! The powers that be have decided that showing a game (that I would have no interest in going to anyway) at 3pm on Saturday would ‘threaten the sanctity’ of the traditional Saturday 3pm kick-off. What utter tosh!
However, if you are like me and this grinds your gears, then hope may be on the horizon! The European Court of Justice recently conducted a study and found that the 3pm black-out has ‘little or no impact’ on attendances and in-fact, the 3pm rule may restrict the European Commission’s desire for cross-border access to audio-visual content.
This sounds great, now as long as we don’t do anything to upset our relationship with Europe, we should all be fine!
Is it Normal to Hate International Fixtures?
I used to love international football, I really did! It seems a very distant memory now but at one point in life, I was actually excited to see how the Three Lions would perform against our continental cousins. Growing up, we had an amazing team. Even to this day, the hair sticks up at the back of my neck when I think of players like Bryan Robson, Tony Adams, Stuart Pearce and Terry Butcher. I look at the current England team and to quote Bonnie Tyler, “where have all the good men gone?”
Am I looking at the teams of old through nostalgic, rose tinted glasses? Perhaps! It is true that the teams I remember so fondly, won nothing. I guess it’s also true that the teams in the past caused even more pain than the current team because I believed! It seemed possible, no more than that, it seemed inevitable, it would only be a matter of time till an England team won a major tournament in my lifetime. But of course I’m still waiting!
So maybe a lot of my general indifference to International football is not down to the current team at all. Could it be that I don’t like Raheem Sterling because Frank Lampard missed a penalty in the 2006 World Cup? Could my loathing of Daniel Sturridge be down to the mighty Paul Ince missing a penalty in the Argentinian World Cup in 1998? And surely wanting to punch Joe Hart has nothing to do with Gareth Southgate missing from 18 yards against the Germans, that wouldn’t make sense, would it?
They do say, “once bitten, twice shy” so maybe that is it. The unrequited love I had for the England team in the 80’s and 90’s has made me incapable of feeling! Maybe the years of physiological abuse at the hands of the England team have just made me an uncaring shadow of my former self.
My relationship with the England football team does often feel like a relationship that is enduring the last rites. In my head I want to walk away, I want to ignore the voice that says “I’ll change, you watch, this time I’ll make you proud” but so often I fall for it and 90 minutes of tedium later I vow never to put myself through this torture ever again, but I do!
I do have one reason though for not campaigning to have the whole England team assigned to room 101 though! The reason? Without an England team, we wouldn’t get any England football songs! And although the team may be terrible, I will stand tall and proudly declare that we make the best footy songs in the world! You only have to look at songs such as Vindaloo, World In Motion and Three Lions to know what I’m talking about!