yet I can't look away...

you are not alone.

Give me a 5 day test or a good super 14 or six nations game anyday.

I am generally indifferent and ignorant about it though.

The only slight problem with this is that footie is often the way one bloke will try and open a conversation with another he doesn't know, and people either don't believe it is conceivably possible that a man doesn't share their interest, or, however much you try and get across that you're not making any value judgement about football, they take it as some sort of insult.

Then they try suggest I'm into rugby. Gradually it comes out that I don't have any interest in sport whatsoever.

I generally try and get them onto music instead. And then announce I like Marillion...

I will happily watch Newcastle (perhaps 'happily' is the wrong word, again, this season) or England play but in general I really don't give a toss.

I'm waiting for the premiership to topple in on itself when all the Russian and Asian billionaires get bored and empty the coffers. Just seeing keen, local young blokes playing for a team for more than two thirds of a season might be good.

Actually, that will never happen. I wonder what will though.

My pet-hate is badge-kissing. When an openly mercenary career footballer kisses the club emblem on his shirt on scoring a goal. We all know that as soon as a better deal is struck for him elsewhere he's outta there. Loyalty, my hairy arse. Just play. Don't give us all that faux love.

...but as I've grown older I've become more disillusioned. Don't know if that has something to do with being a Leeds Utd fan!
Much prefer cricket these days.

It's a daft, thrilling, dumb, elegant, fast, slow, clumsy, vicious, truculent, partisan, balletic ride.

It's a poem. With balls.

"working class ballet" but I can't be doing with ballet either...
It strikes me as something that you have to cultivate an interest in (much like musical theatre or gardening) and to me life is short enough already.
chacun à son goût, eh?

Fr'instance, the whole Kaka business just looked very wrong. Especially as it's the followers who end up footing the bill. It's absurd and ridiculous and disgusting. I'd gladly cop a feel of Mr Gerrard's special area though, but that's not for here

I follow a team; I know more about them and follow their results far closer than any other team. However, I've been to about two games in six years, mainly due to the ridiculous cost of getting in.

I really do like football though. I enjoy watching it on the TV and keeping up to date with what's going on. Asian billionaires buying clubs for hobbies isn't ideal, but I prefer to focus on the actual game itself. If you can see through that and avoid the cliches then it's the same as it's ever been.

I'd liken saying you don't like football purely because of the money issues or diving or whatever to saying you don't like music because you think what's in the Top 40 is rubbish.

...I actively hate the game, as well as the whole scene that surrounds it.

Not that fussed about Six Nations Rugby or test cricket either but I'll gladly watch my local club teams.

When the chance persents itself, watching the quiet middle day of a County Championship game at Worcester from the tranquillity of the pavilion bar is a fine, civilised way to spend a day.

But soccer/football? No.

I agree with Eddie G.

The Premier League is one of the most compelling soap operas in Britain today with every extreme of the human make-up evident every week...oh and some football thrown in too. It is far better than most fiction on the TV currently and I hope it eventually comes crashing down in a Dynasty/Dallas style shoot-up to the tune of Barber's Adagio etc

Well maybe not the last bit.

Music is my first passion and football my second. Oh, hang on, that should be, Mrs W is my first passion...

simply because it's almost guaranteed to feature a goal every quarter of an hour or so, with lots of proper stuff to watch in between. Apart from that, I'll watch Manchester United for old time's sake towards the end of the season (i.e. when the results count for something and they at least try), but it's not what it was, no.

That said, for all the talk of foreign squillionaires taking clubs over and the prawn-sandwichification of the game - which I don't much care for either - I do think there's a good smattering of selective memory going on here. The likes of Abramovich and the Glazers are supposed to be worse than the "traditional" club chairmen like Louie Edwards - the bent butcher, supplier of condemned meat to school kitchens, and cooker of books extraordinaire, who presided over Old Trafford during the Best/Charlton/Law era - exactly how?

It used to be seamy and crooked; now it's glitzy and crooked. But at the end of the day, it's all about ninety minutes, isn't it, Brian?

... I also hate moronic punditry, the thuggish behaviour, etc etc.

In other words all the things that Mr Lynes loathes and despises about the sport..... but all of that's not going to stop me throwing money away at York City every other weekend.

It's about as related to the football I like as X Factor is to the music I like.

A small time, home town club supporter who sadly I don't get to see in the flesh much these days.

Love to watch most footy on telly, whatever the standard.....even the ladies cup final (the goalies are hilarious)..........BUT

can't abide the goings on of the players, the media, the owners, the managers and generally anybody thats involved first hand in the "industry".

Football shouldn't be about business....it will never work or pay as a business without a billionaire to bankroll clubs. Those who think it will, including the Premiership officials are deluding themselves and abusing the "addiction" of the fans who will support their teams through hell or high water.

The Kaka deal would have been "good business" per Mark Hughes. Dream on......at over £100m and for an alleged/reported £500k per week (no doubt net) - how can that be good business? City fans deserve better, as do all supporters.

It will all implode one day, just like the City and the financial system as a whole - it suffers from the same issues broadly i.e. greed and self interest and is effectively unregulated.

Obscene amounts of money changing hands and paid to a bunch of guys who football has saved from a life of crime (well.....saved most of them anyway) who are advised by a bunch of opportunists lining their pockets at the expense of clubs who are now too scared to make a stand.

When it all ends in tears there are few of us who will regret the system falling apart - at least that way the smaller clubs, to whom a week of Kaka's wages would seem like manna from heaven, might start to see some sort of parity restored. And (*irony alert*)it will be interesting to see every premier league club starting with 30 points deducted just like poor Luton when they've all gone bust.

Sorry about that guys.........probably totally incomprehensible but just felt like I needed a rant....I'm going home for a lie down now.

Is there a match on tonight by the way?

as described here makes football sound really exciting. But, like Formula 1, it just isn't.

We football supporters refer to the club as "we" because when the 11 millionaires are retired we will still be turning up to cheer the next lot on. We invest emotion as well as money.
There is also the mistake you've made in equating the Premiership where the millionaires parade their talents with the rest of the structure down through the Championship, Divs One & Two to the minor leagues. To say nothing about most Scottish clubs, and Welsh and Irish clubs.

Natch I despise the wages and the greed. Strangely not the really big money, but the middle-rankers who command ridiculous salaries. EG Jimmy 'not fit to lace even Ray Parlour's laces' Bullard going to Hull but "not for the money"...

...I'm with Molesworth...

who was, actually not too disappointed when we got relegated from the Premier League after two seasons (our first in the top flight since the team formed in 1871) and do love the game - but I guess like a lot of Word readers and their attitude to music, I am a bit of a purist, I hated all that the Premier League stands for.
In other words I despise what has happened to the game in recent years - the relentless pursuit of money, the greed, dishonesty, PR spin, corruption and inept officials running the show.

I hate the sheer lack of decency and morals - the boring, dull and stupid celebrities, the cliches, the sound-bites and the fact that football thinks it operates in a parallel universe where rules, and codes of conduct do not apply.

The Afur Daleys, sheepskin coats with pockets stuffed full of backhanders, the Agents greedily touting their players around like whores. The cheating, diving primadonas, writhing on the floor while looking at the referee pleading to send the opponent off.

But I will be there tomorrow night in the freezing cold, cheering the bunch of Championship cloggers on at the top of my voice...!

but I don't love Premiership footballers, at least most of them.

I'll always remember a documentary made a few years ago about Kieron Dyer that for me summed up a lot of the problems I have with the modern game. The programme showed Dyer returning to his childhood haunts and he was going to great lengths to show that fame and riches hadn't spoilt him and that he was still in touch with his roots. Later in the programme he was showing off a diamond earring he'd just bought, which cost something like £50,000. No Kieron, you haven't lost touch with your roots at all, have you?!

Too many flash harry dickheads in the Premiership, although I support one of the Premiership teams....

At this point can I recommend Tom Bower's book Broken Dreams; Vanity, Greed and The Souring Of English Football? It's a few years out of date, although a revised version came out a couple of years ago.
The scales will fall from your eyes if they haven't already gone. Very few people emerge with any credit, especially not Terry Venables, Ken Bates, Harry Redknapp and a plethora of agents.
Once you've read this, you'll understand, for instance, the reasons why Harry Redknapp and Tottenham are so active in the transfer market.

What really gets me is the constant pushing, shoving, obstruction and shirt-pulling. Wouldn't it be better and more skillful if all that were stopped? Also, I don't understand why the FA let managers and players slag off the referees so much. Neither of these behaviours would be tolerated in my sport (hockey).

It's a both thing for me. Leeds United and Yateley Shields U10 (who I manage sort of) do the football. Occasionaly watch Reading and Aldershot as they are local to me. Don't watch it much on the telly though as Leeds are rarely on.

I don't hate any other sport. Can't be bothered - live and let live. I suppose football is a bit ubiquitous though if you don't like it.

I think that the only thing more boring than football is people talking about it.

There are 88 senior teams in England (and those from Wales) who are not global branding phenomena ... there are also 38 teams in Scotland who are not Rangers or Celtic ... which means that the ultra-hyped, hothouse atmosphere surrounding Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Man Utd (and to a lesser extent Celtic and Rangers) is not replicated for the vast majority of punters who actually go along on a Saturday (Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday - my lot to the best of my knowledge have not played on a Friday in living memory) who are not watching the same carnival as people who "support" the Big Four (and Big McTwo) - so the initial vehemence of this thread may be a tad displaced

Away at Falkirk on Saturday and looking forward to it ...

Many of the the comments posted earlier are true enough, but, speaking from afar, I have to say, enjoy soccer (whoops), and, consider the alternatives in the sports world domination stakes. Take a look at Baseball, Basketball and Football (US variety)and the dimwits that play the games. When was the last time a soccer player a) accidentally shot himself with his own gun in a crowded nightclub b) tried to strangle his coach, c)got caught by the cops in a motel room with a bunch of hookers and a large pile of the white stuff. I could go on ad nauseum, have you guys heard of Alex Rodriguez?, or Fraudriguez, as we know him round these parts. He's as baseball player for the Yankees, his current contract pays him $126 million, like I said, it could be worse. Of course, it goes without saying that Mr Rodriguez has not come close to earning that astronomical sum, but he's entitled to it anyway, he'll tell you that himself.
Soccer is flawed, but, it is a beautiful game, and, is the worlds game for a reason. Embrace and enjoy.

I'll watch the World Cup if I've no shelves to put up, otherwise I don't get it. In Britain it's played in the grey months by men in shorts with visible breath, a mixture of handsome, begloved Europeans (shorts and gloves, what's that all about?) and home-grown, potato-faced troglodytes. And most of the crowd look like the kind of people you wouldn't want allowed into your favourite pub.

I was never into gangs as a kid so why would I want to join one now, whether it's called England, Poland, Arsenal, whatever?

Oh, and you could go home disappointed too if your favourite act "fails". I'll stick with Prince, thanks.

I don't closely follow, but here in Singapore its an obsession so its hard not to know what's going on. Due to the timezone, most games are on at 10 / 11pm and so I may sit and watch at the end of a Saturday night if there is nothing else on. If its a good open game then I may even enjoy.....

I grew up with Rugby and Cricket - have no qualms about staying up til 2am to watch a Six Nations game, but don't tend to watch Cricket as I'm mainly interested in the 5 day game and its not broadcast as often.

One of my favourite pastimes is starting debates with colleagues here on the merits of footballers vs rugby players and how most professional footballers are a bunch of big girls blouses - I still haven't figured out why a slight clip of the ankle can cause a footballer to roll around in agony when a rugby player gets his head stamped on, gets up and gets on with the game.....

...I grew up with "Shoot" magazine in the 70´s, collected the wallcharts, the pannini stickers and can name all the teams that have won the World Cup in correct order.
I still follow the game, but not as much as when I adored Liam " Chippy" Brady and The Arsenal.
However, I find , I can rarely sit down and watch a full 90 minutes on the box anymore, my mind wanders, I read the paper, play Nintendo or flick back and forth through the channels.
I suppose I prefer the idea of football than actually watching it. Much prefer watching rugby.

But I agree, I really need to be committed/interested to sit through ninety minutes. Much prefer Match of the Day-style highlights than the whole enchilada.

...but somewhere along the line my love has diminished.

Growing up as a supporter of Cambridge United, we always had hopes of promotion/cup runs etc etc but this hope has largely disappeared over the years. The chances of Cambridge making it into the Championship (where they have been for two periods in their history) are now virtually non-existent with the way the money in the game is now distributed.

Since moving to Holland, I have become a season ticket holder at FC Utrecht. In the last eight seasons they have finished ninth or 10th in six of them. They are currently ninth. Sometimes they play football which is a joy to watch but mostly they don't and it is now a social thing more than anything else.

I cancelled my cable TV three years ago and now use my TV for watching DVDs. If I want to watch a sporting event I go to the pub. This means I regularly watch rugby in the pub but I can't recall watching a football match in the pub in those three years.

Corruption & Greed,
Working class boys turned millionaires, loved and hated in equal measure for what they've become. Bribery, death, court cases & Jail!
It sounds like The Soprano's....

I hate the way it's been taken over by the chattering classes and especially women who claim they're huge fans. It just doesn't ring true.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/football/premier_league/article55...

As a 'non-believer', I find that you need to approach it with a healthily detached view of how absurd it all is.

Mrs H is the season ticket holder in our house. First time I went to a game, she couldn’t understand why I kept laughing at her fellow supporters who, I’m afraid, are just hilarious to listen to when the red mist descends from 3.00 onwards for a couple of hours.

I can happily watch the odd game here and there, and Soccer Saturday (as mentioned elsewhere) is bizarrely diverting viewing. But there is an awful lot of nonsense talked and written about football. And what other business can you think of where contract negotiations are so glaringly conducted in the public eye ?

And I’d love to get these billionaire owners to watch the penultimate episode of “The West Wing” where CJ talks ‘Bill Gates’ into doing something worthwhile-but-unsung with his vast fortune – there’s probably a better use for £100m than buying Kaka.

"Fever Pitch" is a cracking read though...

Used to love it, as a season ticket holder for several years at Stoke City no less.
Can't be bothered nowadays. The dominance of the "big four" has made it all exceedingly dull. Unless the smaller clubs are able break this situation, it will remain so. Best of luck to Aston Villa.
I also have a bee in my bonnet (bonnets suit me) about "non-local" supporters, an affliction which affects Man Utd in particular; legislation should be passed so that individuals are forced to support the league team which is closest to their place of birth or where they currently live, like it or lump it. For me Stoke and Crewe - glamorous eh? Get to it Mr Brown - complex legislation, and you may have trouble getting it through the Lords, but it's more important than all this economy rubbish you seem to be obsessed with at present.

We could play Stanley Matthews, who was born in the Potteries, but he sadly died a few years back. This would be taking the idea of the "veteran" player a bit too far.

In any case, he may well have been born closer to Port Vale.

There's always Garth Crooks though; but he's put on a bit of weight and I don't like his bizarre Stokie/Southern accent much.

Working for a team currently plying their trade in the Premier League, I still find both the game and the industry at different turns nauseating, bewitching, thrilling, political and mesmerising.

Every single week it throws up at least one story that proves that the world is slightly more preposterous than it was the week before.

REAL MEN WATCH FOOTBALL. It is the only drug of choice.

Sometimes I get a bit fed up with the demonisation of what is predominantly a few arrogant, selfish, immature prima donnas. If the age group and number of football players was taken into account it is actually,relatively speaking, a miniscule number that appear sporadically in the tabloids. What would the press have made of footballers acting as the English cricketers did following the Ashes success. Instead of being seen as 'high jinks'and over exuberance following a night of lively celebration the footballers would have been castigated and completely destroyed by our southern based predominantly middle class media.

And without becoming over emotional ( which I admit I struggle with) being in Istanbul in 2005 when Liverpool won the Champions League Final was the best/worst/most frustrating/most disappointing/most euphoric night of my life.....without exception.

Similarly with rugby supporters. They get up to "high jinks". Yet if the behaviour I witnessed on a train I was unfortunate enough to board, which was full of Oxbridge students on their way back from Twickenham after the Varsity match, had been carried out by football fans, the train would have been stopped and police would have been swarming over it and many would have been working their hangovers off in police cells.

I didn't mind it so much when it was an hour or two on Saturday but now in the age of Satellite TV Mr GWP can find some kind of significant match to watch just about every day of the week.
And his shrieks of excitement & groans of disappointment disturb the cats.
Catie
PS When I first met him his team were not doing so well so I had no idea what I was in for! Just as well I'm happy to tiptoe off and listen to music isn't it?

From the ever wonderful Half Man Half Biscuit

Was there last night and the quality of football was dire even though we are third in the Championship. The problem is it was still a lot of fun - the banter, shouting expletives t your own players, goading the opposition. Yes, it is tribal but there is something addictive about it even though on numerous occasions I have said 'thats it, I am not coming next year".
Also, someone earlier in the postings said that it is ultimately the fans that are paying the wages of the likes of Kaka. This is completely untrue - the days of gates receipts even remotely covering the wages of the players in the team disappeared years ago. The costs are met by TV revenues and rich benefactors.When these disappear the sport may once again return to its working class roots.

Like many here I've followed the game in the past and become disillusioned and bored with the whole thing. Occasionally there will be a spark of interest and I still play in goal for the company team (not a good idea at my age). But the two things that really get my goat are (1) its ubiquity and (2) the tribalism.

The radio clicked on this morning and was I met with another story about a footballing non-entity being accused of some serious sexual offence. This was the lead item. There then followed a report based clearly on virtually zero real information other than a bit of hearsay and more waffle about who kicked who and the tragedy of being sent off last night. Another day, another punch-up, speeding tickets, public expectorating ... I'm not interested.

And then there's the tribalism. I support Oldchester Rovers and wear red, you follow Riverside United and wear blue therefore you're a c**t and I'm supposed to hate you. Why? Beats me. Perhaps someone could explain.

Agreed that some of it stems from Catholic v Protestant biffo in the past but much of the hatred/rivalry is brainless rubbish. I met a Colchester United fan in a pub in Auckland (NZ) recently who asked me who I supported. I told him Ipswich and he seranaded me with a song with lyrics about why Ipswich's ex-manager is a c-word and how he hopes he "dies of aids". Now I support Ipswich and I am supposed to "hate" local teams Norwich and Colchester. Yet I don't.

I also follow England and this means that I should be glad when Scotland fail. I don't - I genuinely want them to do well too. I actually think I am in the majority. It's just the loudmouths are, well, louder.

... I blame Celtic and Rangers for almost everything that's crap about where I come from. My irrational hatred of this sport becomes less irrational when I think about sectarian bigotry which is perpetrated by the idiotic followers of these two teams.

This is a conversation I had with a group of one teams supporters as I tried to evade a beating (not saying which as I equally dislike the blue clad and the green clad sides). It finally persuaded me that I should consider fleeing Scotland...

"Hey you, whit team de ye support?"
"Partick Thistle" (a useful get out clause in these circumstances)
"Whit school did you go to?"
"I was taught at home by my parents."
"Whit religion are you?"
"I'm an atheist"
"Are you a catholic atheist or a protestant atheist?"

At that point I ran away...

I suspect many scots aspire to supporting only 2 national teams: Scotland and Whoevers-playing-england. Thankfully my interest in football is so little I really do't care enough to. Having said that, at my one experience of international Soccer was Scotland versus Switzerland at Villa Park some years ago, I found myself enormously moved and in sympathy with the Tartan army, giving a huge swansong to their team, who, I think even after winning the game, hadn't won enough, and exited whatever competition it was. As one bedraggled, internally and externally, supporter said to me, "Scotland; best losers in the world........" Sadly, certainly not inexperienced.
That day was earlier highlit by the complete astonishment and amazement by the local Rastas about Villa Park, knowing not what to do at all about the massed ranks of bekilted men rampaging joyfully, shouting goodnatured banter at all the local womenfolk, behaviour that would have brought about stern retribution if carried out in trousers. Made me quite proud.

that I’m not sure kids know how to play it anymore. I remember watching a curious scene in my local park last summer. A group of young lads turned up, all kitted out in pricey gear etc., with more drifting in and joining them until there were about 12 of them. They made a goal out of bags etc. and proceeded to “play football”. Now it pains me to come over all “when I were a lad” but in my day this would have involved dividing up into two teams and playing a game. Not anymore it seems. Now it involves showing off fancy flicks etc. Crossing and headers/ shots. They didn’t make two goals, just the one. It was bizarre. I know quite a few young lads who are “into football”. They have the shirts and what have you. But they never play it. They just watch it on the telly. Football’s becoming one of those things you passively watch or follow, rather than actively do. Wasn’t like that in my day when it was all fields round here.

Two things are undermining the perception of the modern game:
1) The fact that a lot of Premier League players are childish, overpaid arseholes.
2) TV highlights. Match of the Day is awful these days, consisting of more talk than action, a lot of silly clips accompanied by faux rock music, and smart arse editing that is only there to go on the producers' CV.

Bound to be a disappointing draw.

And support your local team.

I abandoned my Scottish Premier League team of 30+ years standing for an adventurous time traipsing round the country watching Edinburgh City and Spartans in the semi-pro East of Scotland League.

How else would I have seen the delights of Dalbeattie Star and Easthouses Lily on a cold, winters day, with a 50p cup of tea, a £2 programme and a £3 admission. Proper footie.

It's the same with every modern "big league" sport in any country -- a crushing layer of corporate marketing, cross-promotion and celebrity journalism has been plopped on top of a brilliant game now played by bigger, fitter, faster and better trained athletes.
The challenge is ignore all of the former to take pleasure in the latter. It's difficult to do.
With tickets so expensive, marketers have taken up the challenge of making the matchday experience "fun and memorable" even if the home team never wins or is off its game. This rings entirely false to the genuine fan. Part of the pleasure of caring is to be pissed off if your team plays poorly and, of course, to be elated when it plays well.

..especially when people ask "who do you support?" without first finding out "are you interested in Football?".

I wouldn't ask someone for their favourite Neil Young album without first assertaining if they were a Shakey fan.

I love football, both watching and playing, but I have to say the below;

Without intending to sound too snobby (although sod it, I'm a snob and I don't care), the likes of people who regularly read daily comics such as The Sun, and base their chants, opinions, and attitudes on what they see on Soccer Am each saturday, are influenced by the afformention ill informed, hype building, mob inducing, 'lad' culture which get spoon fed into their empty heads.

If people actually took the time to look into the facts and various arguuments of issues which they then force upon others as their own opinions, then football fans as a whole wouldn't be such utter morons, and it would make the day-to-day football culture so much more appealing.

Can't quite fathom this. Football is pure poetry, always the same always different (actually, that means it's probably more like The Fall) You can enjoy watching the FA Cup Final and nothing else, you can immerse yourself in the game completely, you can play (or not) at any level or age, you can collect the autographs, the stickers, the shirts, the programmes; you can enjoy the muscular artlessness of the local leagues as much as the lightning artistry of the premmier league. It's endlessly fascinating and beautiful.

Oh, and rugby's just rubbish!

.

Yemen Republic circa 1998. Better than tribal war.

A home win for Sayun - 2-0, if I remember correctly.