I’ll rip the bandaid off because there’s no point stalling: I’ve never been interested in sport, least of all football. While I respect that it’s simply not my thing and that everyone’s allowed to have their own passions and interests, there is nothing more aggravating for me than when I’m out with friends for a couple of drinks and a chat, or when I’m meeting new people for that matter, and football is mentioned. It means I have to zone out because I simply could not contribute anything meaningful to the discussion, beyond a potshot at how mind-numbingly boring I find the sport. If you’ve seen the IT Crowd episode about football, I’m basically Moss, only unlike Moss I know I’d make a fool of myself if I tried to join in with the football crowd so I simply don’t bother.
Some days I’m deeply cynical about the culture that surrounds football, and I bluntly ignore the wholehearted passion of many fans. It’s a miracle I didn’t say what I was thinking when I had to move through the army of Newcastle supporters in the Toon the other week, because I probably would’ve feared for my life.
Undoubtedly some of the headlines put me off. The fact that social media was flooded with helplines for domestic abuse charities on the night of England’s Euro loss last year suggests that a culture of violence and misogyny is still rampant within the sport, with research conducted by Kick It Out showing that 52% of female fans have experienced sexist behaviour on a matchday, and over half of them deciding not to report it because there’s ‘no point.’
However, for as pessimistic as I can be, I also know that this isn’t the whole story as football culture goes - far from it. If you’re with the right people then the experience of going to a football match, or watching it in the pub with a round of drinks, is an incredibly fun one. I’ve watched the odd one with friends from home, who I trust with being civil, and I’m always able to at least reasonably enjoy myself even if I have no interest in the sport - it’s making memories with my friends that’s the most important thing.
I think I got my main impression of football culture when I watched the Taika Waititi film Next Goal Wins, about the infamously terrible American Samoan team. It’s by no means a great film, but it finally got me to stop being such an unlikable prat about my distaste for football. In that film, the team knows that they’re not particularly good, but they love the community spirit of it, so much so that they all have multiple jobs that they only do to keep the team afloat financially. This is something that their coach Thomas Rongen, played by Michael Fassbender, realises when they play in an international tournament, and gives them the ultimate advice: ignore him, and enjoy yourselves. They end up scoring, and both the team and their supporters are overjoyed.
Football, or indeed any sport, may not be for me but it’s one of the best things in the world for instilling a sense of community spirit that can bring people together and, while there’s still systemic issues within the culture of football fandom that need to be sorted out, it’s those decent people that show the football community in a good light that act as role models for what football culture should be like all the time. That way, I might not be so dejected whenever there’s a match on.