Alright so the title is slightly over-the-top but football fans are getting on my nerves.
I used to love football. I was a regular at Pride Park and worked my holidays around major championships that England or, more rarely, Scotland were involved in.
But football fans have ruined it for me. Not all of them, but the snarling, vociforous majority who excuse their shocking behaviour by whimpering 'it's because I'm so passionate'. I'm passionate about plenty of things without turning into a cross between Norman Tebbit and the Kray twins.
And I'm not talking about traditional hooligans here. I'm talking about normal people who turn into Neanderthals when their beloved team in mentioned. People who have nice families, hold down good jobs, are involved in their community and don't hold criminal convictions.
They seem to have seen Green Street,thought 'now that's passion' and hold it aloft as an aspirational standard which their middle-class upbringing will never allow them to achieve.
It's the blinkered view on the world that gets me. Their player commits a foul and it's ok. A foul is committed on their player and you can expect frothing at the mouth and death threats against the ref who failed to spot what they could quite plainly see after 12 different camera angles were played at super slowmo over a period of five minutes.
They must know the truth. Deep down the reality of the situation must flash like a beacon but hypocrisy knows no bounds with football fans.
The truth is that Vidic should have been sent off after five minutes of the Carling Cup final, that Shawcross did not commit a horrific foul and that Wayne Bridge does not deserve to be booed just because his best mate had an affair with his (ex?) partner.
Maybe we in the media are to blame. Certainly some of the responsibility rests with us.
Transferring sport from the back pages to the front has resulted in the minute details being picked over and the elevation of sports stars to A List celebs and cultural prophets.
Muppets like Adrian Durham on Talksport excuse bad behaviour and violence as the understandable result of passion and we attack the perception of failure by managers in the same way we attack politicians.
All I know is that I am glad I have rugby and that so far it hasn't gone so far down the wrong road as wendy ball.
I stopped listening to TalkSh*t years ago as all Durham et al really do is come out with some crap which is guaranteed to get A.N. Idiot (usually from London..) to ring in a with a retort.
ReplyDeleteBut to be fair to them, you see the contradictions in reaction in rugby as well, particularly in Eddie Butlers commentaries. England playing - oh lets wait for the anti-english jibes, Wales (or any one but England playing) and it's champagne rugby. Perhaps not in the same area of spite, but hypocrisy nevertheless..