Originally published 7 June 2010I'm not a fan of football (or soccer, as it is called by nations that use that name for another game that doesn't use anything that could logically be designated a ball, or indeed use feet much). I've tried sitting through a game from start to finish, but I've never managed to stay awake all the way through.
Heaven knows I've tried. When I was a kid I had cousins who were devoted to Chelsea, and I tried to join in, but it seemed to involve wearing blue a lot and singing witless songs about the colour blue. The violence at the games in the 70s weren't much of a plus point either. And the tribalism drove me mad. You could guarantee that if ever a tough kid came up you you in the street and asked you what football team you supported, whatever you gave as an answer it would be wrong and you'd be duffed up.
I accidentally got involved in the football fanzine scene in the late 80s, designing a grass roots Tottenham Hotspur supporter's magazine called The Spur. This showed me the other side of the coin, it was possible to be a liberal human being and a football fan, with your team being the centre of an open minded community rather than a hostile tribe. While I was there, we campaigned against the destruction of a much loved football stand, the Shelf, against the increasing commercialisation of the game as Tottenham morphed from a football team to into an impersonal PLC, excoriated racism and thuggery, tried to make sense of the horrific Hillsborough tragedy, and paid tribute to Gary Lineker and Paul 'Gazza' Gascoigne in their glory years. And still the game was as dull as ditchwater to me.
I have such little interest in football that when I was once approached by a very nice man in an Arsenal shirt at an exhibition where I was participating in drawing a comic for charity who told me how much he liked my drawing, I had no idea who he was. My awestruck companions had to explain to me afterwards that he was Ian Wright, the legendary Arsenal and England striker. You can gauge how little this meant to me by the fact that I've just had to look up his name on Wikipedia.
Once every four years, the World Cup happens. It completely takes over every single form of media in the country for a month and the only way to escape it is to move to the USA for the duration. There is a good chance that that's where you'll find me between 12 June and 13 July next year, as for some reason every other country on the planet is fascinated by the game as well.
