… During a stint as a metalworker a few years ago, he was put in the factory team. Start by refusing to become a slave to football's pointless merry-go-round every summer. Mr. Preg— A mean nickname for a fat guy with a large belly like pregnant women. Take the transfer gossip pages with a pinch of salt (trust me, most of it really is made up) and certainly don't bother frittering your money on pointless pre-season friendlies or the Intertoto Cup (you never know, Uefa might eventually get the message). And these men are tough, they get kick in the head and in other parts of the body and still go on. The trouble is, there are just seven clubs in the country owned by supporters' trusts - while only 23 trusts have elected directors on the board. While "Johnny Fan Controlled Football" doesn't have the same ring to it as his more familiar nickname, Johnny Manziel is back on a football field getting ready to help a startup league. He had been at the factory two years without his eccentricity coming to light. After he threw the ball in one-handed, his team-mates realised the truth; as did the other side. Like Martin Frost, he has nothing against the game: he even played for Cambridge University once, though he prefers rugby. If you believe fans should be allowed to stand again, join http://www.safestanding.com/safe/index.php or organise a national standing day - let's see the stewards try to stop thousands of you. But what about the cameraderie, the passion, the drama? If a guy has a friend that has cancer the guy won’t ask the other guy how he’s … Some gay men prefer Monday Night Football to box seats at "Cats." In short, it's not necessarily a given that football will become more soulless and uncompetitive with every passing year. It's not good for English football that we now have a three-teams-can-win-it Premiership. He really is an idiot" - Groucho Marx. Despite his protestations, he was written off as a football dunce, and from that day the die was cast. But here's the rub: despite being as predictable as a Jo Brand fat-gag, the Premiership is as popular as ever. He, too, could be one of the other half. Meanwhile journalists who dare criticise a winning team - as acquaintances of mine did by suggesting Greece's Euro 2004 win was bad for football and that Liverpool were dull to watch in the Champions League last season - receive a steady thud-thud of abusive emails and are accused on message boards of having a 'vendetta' or a 'hidden agenda'. Soccer News of Thursday, 14 January 2021. The fact that they'd switch employers for a 200% pay rise without a millisecond's thought seems lost on them. Nothing more. No really, why? "THE only men you'll find who don't like football," a friend declared as if pronouncing a law of nature, "are the ones who weren't picked for the team at school." Elephant— A huge and fat guy. The Scientific Reason Men Like Sports More Than Women ... Players on the champion Leicester City Football Club watch rivals on TV during their championship run. If he’s the one always doing the work, it’s going to get boring for him. With the advent of the New Lad, innocent bystanders now face the additional menace of being cornered by football fans who want to share their feelings with them. Or just thinking: 'Yeah, and?'. "I'd ban football and drive it underground - make it like dogfighting and bare-knuckle fighting," he declares. Sadly, intelligent, measured comment from fans - always a sickly child - is now on its deathbed. Jimmy Armfield, who played for Blackpool in the days of the maximum wage, before 1961, and for England, sympathises with the older fan. John Duguid's experience was more traumatic. Most seem to enjoy the game at some level, even if our footballing enthusiasm only flowers every four years, like some exotic desert bloom. And yes, that probably includes you. Start your Independent Premium subscription today. "To the fan who's watched his team 30, 40 years, it's a lot to take on board all at once." Gay men don’t like sports. The photos used in the study, which revealed women favored pictures of the men without cats. Dr Steve Redhead of Manchester Metropolitan University, who discussed the phenomenon in his book Football With Attitude, doubts that soccer will keep its new-found standing among the middle classes in the face of English football culture's recent return to its familiar violent form. But each May, most fans' response is thuddingly predictable: a moan, a brief moment of contemplation, and then a question - do you take Visa or MasterCard? basis of a highly successful career. British males, as we all know, are genetically destined to fall in love with the Beautiful Game. And with any luck, football's imperialism - an imperialism which dictates that gossip about a rich player going from one rich club to another is the most important story in the sporting world - might start to crumble. Football, for all its faults, is still the best sport in the world. And what DJ Spoony, the show's regular host, knows about football could be written on the label of a 12-inch vinyl. He is content to have been a player then rather than now, but unsentimental: "We were tied, we couldn't change clubs. The loyalty factor was there, in many instances because it was imposed.". 8, col. 1: If you're sick of the Premiership, try watching your local club again. As a youth, he preferred going rabbiting with his ferret. And the skills of the players are amazing, they do things that you don’t see in American football, These men jump in the air and kick the ball or use their heads, or do back flips. When are you going to realise that when your favourite club isn't counting your cash, it's laughing at you? "My only experience of football was one of those Subbuteo-style games, so I thought the thing was that the ball would come to me. Even if a match is shunted to some unholy hour to accommodate Sky, you think nothing of travelling hundreds of miles to sit in a stadium with all the atmosphere of a wake, to show loyalty to your club. “The game of football,” he replied, “may be described as a game in which there are 22 men on the field who desperately need rest and about 40,000 people in the stands who desperately need exercise.” 11 October 1978, The Stars and Stripes (Europe), “Staying fit may add 20 years to life, Cooper says” by Mike Spear, pg. "While the pros are polite to supporters, they think them fools," wrote Rick Gekoski in his excellent book on Coventry's 1997-98 season, A Fan Behind The Scenes In The Premiership. "the licensing of the lad", and what he sees as the essential conservatism of the populist middle-class football cult. For you take more interest in pre-season friendlies - games which are, without exception, about as meaningful as Gazza's comedy breasts - than the growing inequality between football's haves and have-nots and what to do about it. 17 Gift Ideas If You Know Somebody Who Loves Football But You Don't. You just have set points when you can sign, but if you don’t … But the game needs your help. After all, no one ever changed the world by sitting on their capacious backside, eating a pork pie and shouting beetroot-face abuse at Wayne Rooney, did they? At the grass roots, there was the flowering of fanzine culture, and the crossover between football and rock music that was at its most fertile in the Manchester scene of the late 1980s. When it's your club being dragged over the coals, you fight tooth and nail. "It's socially, Read our full mailing list consent terms here, reinforced yobbishness. What happened? Men don’t talk to each other about how things are going. Everyone remembers that Manchester United pick-pocketed the first Premiership title in 1992-93 - what seems amazing now is that Aston Villa finished second, Norwich third, Blackburn fourth and QPR fifth. If you took less interest in football, the media might too. If you think a Sky Sports subscription is too expensive, watch the games in the pub. He was not free to pick and choose among the glamorous clubs of Britain and the star players of Europe. Yet, such men usually prefer very feminine women and overlook women like her because as a masculine man, he has his choice of women, rather than having to take whatever he can get like other men (e.g. Early experience appears to be critical. Why? This is my stand against laddishness.". ', "Another player, who did not wish to be named, said: 'Fans? The few who do not are merely physical inadequates; the sporting underclass. Trunk— The one who has a large belly like a trunk. Saying that men like smart women encompassed about 1 percent of the nuanced reality. Lighting technician Ian Burns devoted much of his leisure time in his formative years to rediscovering the skills of the hunter. Here's what will happen in the Premiership this season: Chelsea, or Arsenal or Manchester United, will win the title. It's not a game any more." They mean it in a positive sense - ignoring the fact that religion is antithetical to reason and rationality. Football is pricier, more uncompetitive and less atmospheric than ever. You just don't see basketball players with V shaped backs because wide guys don't jump as high. Like sheep, the crowd responds, sings one song, and then settles back into silence. Just boring, unappealing and doesn't coincide with any of my interests at all. It's certainly a common enough phenomenon, as those of us can testify who grew up under the impression that our role as "full-backs" consisted of leaning against the goalposts, in the manner of the great Nigel Molesworth, and discussing the higher things of life with the goalkeeper. Of course, the truth is that men evolved in small hunter-gatherer bands. Out of some 22 million men, about five million men paid to watch a football match last year; eight million enjoy reading about it; and 11 million watch it on TV. Every other week? Don't get us wrong: Women can be emotionally stunted too. He really is an idiot" - Groucho Marx. At the extreme end of the scale, it's hard to find men who truly detest football. "It's a slightly `hipper' version of John Major's village cricket," he snorts. Become smarter and less compliant. This is part of the reason why it took an entire high school football team full of women for some of us to finally just consider that Bill Cosby might not be Cliff Huxtable. It indicates that it's not the game that puts male football dissidents off, but the fans. "I suppose it has led to a certain alienation from my sex," he allows, noting that he tends to prefer the company of women. Even if the game was dire, the chants and terrace witticisms would turn it into a spectacle of sorts - albeit one where hooliganism was rife. Or Bristol Rovers with demanding £415 for a League Two season ticket? In the last 10 years, that figure was just six [Man Utd, Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Newcastle and Leeds]. When it's the club up the road, you merely shrug your shoulders. He follows football precisely in order to engage its fans in conversation and tease them. "I was reminded of a conversation I'd had with John Salako. Martin Frost, a 27-year-old advertising copywriter, tries to beat the football cognoscenti at their own game. Most fans were rightly appalled by how the FA allowed Wimbledon move to Milton Keynes - but how many protested? Because you let them. Let's make some noise!" His uncle took him to a football match when he was 10, but he was bored. feminine men, neutral men, insecure men, nervous nice guys, etc). Later on in his schooldays, he was excused games to work on the school magazine. And if a journalist writes something you disagree with, he carries a vendetta. What he objects to is. The equivalent urban image is that of flat caps and baggy shorts, symbols of lost values and certainties. That's not to say intelligent, hard-working and crusading football fans don't exist. "It's all come together; the commercialism, the contract system, players travelling all round Europe, European rules; it's a massive business," he observes. Just because men aren't adept at expressing their feelings, don't for a minute think they don't feel, and feel deeply. The truth is usually more prosaic: the hack's verdict is just one opinion in a game awash with them. “Recruiting never ends. But a jockstrap during college football or jiu jitsu? Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? "), but the facts don't back that up. Men who love men but who don’t identify with the LGBTQ community have come up with a new word to describe themselves in this ‘new light.’ “I think ‘homosexual’ is a bit clinical, and lots of people use it negatively,” Nicolas Chinardet says . If you don't like sports, you will enjoy these letters of support. Now 34, he grew up in Walton, close to both the Liverpool and Everton grounds, and yet remained almost completely immune to the pull of the stadiums. Yes, if you support the big four. I think playing sports is great, but the worship of the sports culture, on the whole, is bad for men… Arsenal might just be able to justify charging £1,825, the most expensive season ticket in the Premiership, by citing market forces - but how can Millwall get away with asking £29 to watch their match with Sheffield Wednesday? More importantly still, widen your focus to beyond your club. Fans stand up for themselves more in mainland Europe; in England they just roll over. Saying yes to foreign football but no to the English game is more than a sign of limited interest. As Stefan Szmanski and Tim Kuypers show in Winners & Losers, The Business Strategy of Football, demand for football in the UK - like cigarettes and booze - is price inelastic. "I went off it when I discovered booze and girls and parties." I don’t like so-called masculine cultures, even as I find myself more comfortable in them. Be the MVP of the holiday season. At the commercial end, there was the upscale marketing of the 1990 World Cup. Want an ad-free experience?Subscribe to Independent Premium. This should not be so surprising: society in general is becoming increasingly fragmented in its tastes. So why do supporters still lap it up, asks a bemused Sean Ingle, http://www.safestanding.com/safe/index.php. "The first Tuesday afternoon, I was put out on the right, wing," he recalls. Come on. But elsewhere the standard has dipped, simply because of the top clubs' spending power. When it comes to football, your rationality goes awol. Some on the players side would like everything to be virtual. Take a look at the man next to you. Ian says he didn't come under pressure in the playground, but then his toughness was never in doubt. A cheap ticket for Borussia Dortmund costs under £10, Roma just £15, and a Real Madrid season ticket is a bargain £200. RIYAD Mahrez's wife claimed she was "fined for being too hot" as she broke lockdown rules, asking cops: "Don’t you guys like to party anymore?" And you pay £20, £30 or £40 for this? Players hate fans.'". If a referee makes a dubious decision against your team, he's a wanker or a cheat. Or your brother?” On a similar note, this one is just … Maybe you've felt like you're in a romantic relationship with your sports team. Apple cheeks— A fat guy with heavy red cheeks. Sadly, it's not reciprocated. As a Liverpudlian male, however, he is assumed to be football-wise. This campaign of subversion would be impossible if Frost had not been a Liverpool fan in his youth. "Before that, I used to catch frogs." 'Fans,' he said, 'most of them are sad. ... “You don’t … The same club that's always thinking of ingenious new ways to bleed you dry. Aaron is so tall that, even at a massive almost 300 lbs. “That will be the first opportunity for us to sign guys on that day,” Harsin said. 5. Sure, guys like to take the lead and initiate in the bedroom, but they don’t like to all the time. They Remind People Of Childhood Trauma Another problem is that supporters remain stunningly insular. Yet many British men still somehow manage to let it all pass them by. Or that TV money is more unequally distributed than ever. Nowadays, Dennis observes, "It's big business, almost theatrical. Now he's merely a Chelsea reserve. And with Champions League money and Roman Abramovich's hard-earned roubles swishing around, the gap between the rich and the rest is widening by the season. And that's not all you buy. That is, when prices go up, demand dips only slightly. Nevertheless, the media seem to be ever more convinced that we are one uniform football-loving nation. The truth is, you probably only leave your seat only when a goal is scored, five minutes before half-time (to go to the toilet and scoff down a congealed pie in four bites or less) and, 10 minutes before the end "to beat the traffic". There was also punk rock. What the football dissidents object to is not football, it's the fans. Boring because I learn nothing from it that I can use in my life (just like the news - how does knowing more about an athelete's game or a murder in another city help me be a better person?). Why Men Like Joe Rogan Need the Covid Vaccine ... says the last time he wore a jockstrap “was for pee wee football. Surprised? Martin Frost, a 27-year-old advertising copywriter, tries to beat the football cognoscenti at their own game. I said: Are you ready? We receive hundreds of letters every year from people all over the world who can't understand the mass hysteria or sheep-like behavior of sports fans. "Most fans buy it every single time," he chuckles. of football talk shows, is now a starchy mix of the vain, inane and the ignorant. Whenever a star player leaves for a big club and more money, fans swarm onto Sky Sports News or the local radio, each spitting "betrayal" with Paisleyesque venom. I fidget the pounds away nervously all day. Oil prices and company directors' pay-rises apart, few things in life are consistently more inflation-busting than season ticket price-hikes. His suspicion is shared by pop critic Jon Savage, who views the football bandwagon with a jaundiced eye. Football fans are idiots. he still manages to look elegant and aesthetic. The problem with sports begins in our schools. After all, you remain hooked on a sport that has, over the past decade, become as competitive as a F1 warm-up lap - while at the same time taking ever-larger chunks out of your salary. To see how the fans responded to this article, click here. Or, to rephrase that sentence using less incendiary language: when it comes to football, intelligent people act stupid. Liverpool will come fourth. How does a man remain so ignorant of the basic facts of life? I know one agent who tells his players, who mostly play in the lower leagues, to kiss the badge when they first score for their new club. So get involved. Your idiocy doesn't end there. You'd follow them everywhere, perhaps even fight for them. But it has become an increasingly ugly mix of Thatcherite greed and Gradgrindian inequality. de la cr? He discovered that he preferred gossip and writing to team sports, and these skills have formed the. It's a red rag to the kind of man who goes through life with one foot in the playground. We know how passionate sports can make us feel, especially if a team wins a big game or loses one. One of the 10 or 11 teams who graze in mid-table will surprise us, but the rest won't. Actually, he still takes an interest in the international soccer scene, but football itself is not really the issue. The chattering classes capitulated in droves to the New Lad in the wake of Nick Hornby's bestselling memoir Fever Pitch, which did more to broaden the market for football culture than any work except Pavarotti's recording of "Nessun Dorma". At 37, journalist Andrew Billen remembers his school pitch debut as if it were yesterday. They wouldn't stand for it on the continent. If … So what do you get for your over-priced match ticket? Sean Ingle is the sports editor of Guardian Unlimited. Ditto trust-owned Chesterfield, which has gone from £2m in debt to break even, with the highest gates in 24 seasons. You would be surprised how many of them claim not to be able to name the England manager (no, he isn't called Cantona) or to know who's top of the Premier League. Most people really aren't interested in sports! I think that MOST girls don't like football is because it's pretty much unattractive to them. Deep Well— The one who is fat and is always hungry to put something in his belly. Football fans prefer to revel in their "hardcore" commitment. They have to be, too: it's an exclusive fraternity with strict and elaborate rules. It's the belief that men evolved to stand in groups of several thousand, shouting. Football, as 'creative' advertising types never tire of telling us, is like a religion. And then there's Luton, who having escaped the clutches of John Gurney largely due to fans' pressure and a skilful media campaign, now stand atop the Championship. "He may look like an idiot and talk like an idiot but don't let that fool you. These days at home matches, what usually happens? But we have found that the emotionally stunted man-child will have one of two (immature) responses when the issue is brought to his attention: So, here's a plan of sorts. "I had a very similar feeling when I went to a bullfight in Spain," he retorts. Lots of guys like it when a woman steps up and initiates sex, or even better, plots a sexy ambush before pouncing. And at least one newly-promoted side will go straight back down. It's the totalitarianism: the taxi-driver's assumption that all men know all about the game, the implication that there's something wrong with any man who doesn't. Realising that any answer was likely to be the wrong answer, John retreated from the playground to the library, and once again, his future course was set. If it's the latter, you perhaps reckon football has always been this predictable ("Didn't Liverpool win everything in the 80s? Instead, get out more. But can it be the whole story? According to projections from figures gathered by the Target Group Index lifestyle survey, bible of the advertising industry, football in Britain is indeed a game of two halves. They think the game is more important than it is, it says something about the miserable kind of lives they must lead. "I find it quite amusing the way people are rabid about it," he observes. They’re men who, like you, don’t watch a minute of any sports telecast (be it a sports event, commentary or sports news) either live or from a DVR within seven days of the original broadcast. "The game doesn't bother me. “Did your dad teach you about football? Football that's sharper and sexier than a decade ago? Cue smiles in boardrooms across the land. If the vets don’t want to come, they don’t have to come. After 20 minutes Miss Jarrett said, `You've got to try, Billen'." These sports gift ideas are perfect for the gym, the game, and supporting his favorite team. Just look at Lincoln, where supporters were involved in part of a community buy-out in 2001 - attendances are up and so are profits. And that's not a skewed example - between 1985-95, 13 different clubs finished in the top three, exactly the same number as in the previous decade (and the decade before that). A fan's loyalties were clear and simple. The argument is that it lets off steam, but I think it actually creates it.". Simply put, you love your club, and believe that - on some level - there's a bond between you, the players and your team. Some fans will accept all the above, but defend themselves with the greatest idiocy of all. Ten years ago, for instance, Manchester City would have built their team around Shaun-Wright Phillips. Now 36, he advocates prohibition. It used to be that if you lost less than seven games you'd win the league - but since Boxing Day 2002, when Manchester United lost to Middlesbrough, the eventual Premiership winners have lost just one league game between them (Chelsea's 1-0 defeat at Manchester City) in 95 matches. Their responses showed that the men's luck got noticeably worse when women saw the picture with a cat. Foreign supporters may be just as laddish, but they can be ignored because they aren't in your face. There's the season ticket, the third alternative away strip, the premium rate text service to keep you abreast of your reserve striker's groin injury, etc and so on. Don't show me this message again “I want [the men I date] to be straight-acting.” This is a direct quote from a gay man in a recently aired episode of Channel 4’s First Dates . Bloke within themselves, rejoicing in the discovery that the proper way for a New Man to respond to the challenge of feminism was to talk about football to his heart's content ... Two developments in particular in recent years made football safe for the chattering classes. Enjoy the sporting summer: Wimbledon, the Open, the flat season, rugby league, cricket, whatever - all sports where Corinthian values haven't yet been splayed by a pernicious win-at-all-costs mentality. It's just not my interest. It’s still voluntary. 5. Every Match of the Day was a must," he recalls. The atmosphere's become rubbish too. "He may look like an idiot and talk like an idiot but don't let that fool you. Smart people would stand up to such exploitation. Or - as Lord Burns recently pointed out - that the Premiership clubs have undue influence with the Football Association. {{#verifyErrors}} {{message}} {{/verifyErrors}} {{^verifyErrors}} {{message}} {{/verifyErrors}}. Football— Round shaped fat guy! Taking only a passing interest in the game is like enjoying an unfashionable pop record. Former public schoolboys and erstwhile angst- ridden bohemians scrambled to discover the Ordinary. Men Just Don't Trust Women -- And It's A Huge Problem. Find your bookmarks in your Independent Premium section, under my profile. They get things out of proportion. It needs to be taken down a peg - and supporters are the best ones to do it. And a lot of tall men are like me, naturally lanky, and we just don't put on weight that easily. More... Free Our Schools! Appalled? You worship players who are at best indifferent to you, and at worst despise you. Mutual trusts need to become the norm, not the exception, and that needs fans to get stuck in. Gay men can’t help themselves from hitting on straight guys. I find them boring and a waste of time. And who knows, if … Source: www.ghanaweb.com 2021-01-14 ‘Don’t act like men because of football’ – Berry Ladies CEO advises female players It seems unlikely that the other half are all natural born full-backs. ... Don’t … The loyalty argument. Older British men like Dennis, a retired businessman aged 70, cherish their boyhood memories of football, of a time when fans supported their local team, whose players spent their entire careers with the club, on working men's wages. Football is spreading inexorably from the back pages of newspapers to the front, and from the end of news bulletins to the beginning. At his north London state school in the late 1960s he would be cornered by marauding gangs who demanded to know which team he supported. Plays and hits that were legal 20 years ago are no longer permitted, and even the guys playing the game don't fully know what's allowed anymore. Examples abound. If Birmingham are charging £45 for an away ticket (as they did to Manchester United fans last season) just say no. It's the following of football, this inane passion. One of the commonest social difficulties faced by male football illiterates is the assumption that all men are expert in the minutiae of the sport.

Calle Rose Clothing, Nano Curcumin Dosage, Sun Tzu Art Of War Technoblade, Marcus Collins Linked In, Huntington, Wv Newspaper Archives, Who Was The Last Moorish Ruler Of Spain?,