NOT INTO FOOTBALL

“Are you into football then, Matt?” asked someone on a call today. You know how sometimes you get asked a question and you can tell that the person asking is fully expecting you to say no? Well the clues were all there. I’m clearly the kind of person who looks like they shouldn’t be into football. I said I didn’t mind it.

“But last night’s game,” I went on, “was just horrible. Right the way through I was just wishing I wasn’t watching it. So stressful!”

She nodded in agreement.

England did lose to Argentina, normal time 2-1. The first half was stop-start, push-people-over, tetchy argy-bargy. The second half was better, then England scored, then Argentina threw everything at them while England focused on defending the barrage of attack (for some inexplicable reason). I say all this for the record, and as a reminder if you’re reading this years in the future. There were still about 30 minutes to go so Argentina just went relentlessly looking for the equaliser. They equalised (everyone must have known it was coming). Then seven minutes later, they scored again, and basically that was that.

The whole thing from start to finish was just awful. And I, like a moth drawn ever so slightly too close to the flame, couldn’t turn it off. What a load of nonsense.

So maybe she was right to assume football is not for me. My whole life has been skirted by people who thought the same; why not the main contact from our podcast agency? I have always sort of suspected it might be nonsense. I’ve gone along with the excitement of others, stood in front of big screens and sat on people’s sofas. But I just think that if every single weekend is like that for you, watching your team float miserably between hope and despair, and you have to navigate that in your own life on Saturday afternoons between August and May and every other summer… maybe this ridiculous sport has you trapped.

I confess I did think about tattoo man. How’s he doing, I wonder? If I were him, I’d probably wear long trousers. But I’m not. I’m me. And in two years’ time I’ll have to ask myself again whether I can be bothered with all this.