Why Do We Take Football So Seriously?

By Rex Davids
I love football. It’s a great form of entertainment. The banter, the support, the undying loyalty, the sell outs, the glory hunters.... the list is endless. But what I don’t understand is, why do many people (yes men AND women) take it so seriously?


I am a keen Liverpool supporter; I live on the Wirral which is approximately 20 minutes away from Anfield. I get called a ‘Woolly Back’ or a ‘Plastic Scouser’ by born and bred Liverpudlians whenever I tell them what team I support. It is only a football team at the end of the day; yet people feel the need to keep it within their community, within a close nit group of people, as if it would be an honour to be a true fan – accepted. I laugh and wonder whether they realise that the Liverpool team that they are watching consists of Spaniards, Dutch, Israelis et cetera? When speaking to this type of supporter a catch 22 situation arises. I could say I support Tranmere Rovers Football club but they would hate this because it’s not Liverpool football club, it’s not their team, and we cannot bond on the subject of LFC. Also - like Evertonians, Tranmere supporters tend to be bitter due to LFC’s notorious successful history. I emphasis the word ‘their’ because this is a term used by many football supporters when talking about the team that they support. It is not actually ‘their’ team at all – far from it. Usually teams these days belong to money grabbers who are trying to cash in on the strong marketing prospects of English Football, especially the Premier League. The standard fan is just a source of money, it doesn’t matter if Liverpool Football Club wins a trophy, as long as the figures are correct at the end of the season and the books are kept green. It can be argued that football is the new golf with regards to the corporate members attending the game. Many people who don’t care about football go to the game to talk politics and form business relationships - which should happen on the golf course. Why do you think that immediately after the second half of a game at Wembley many of the seats you see are still empty? This is because the ‘corporates’, as the true supporter calls them, are still sipping away at their champagne boasting about the new typeset on their gold plated business card. In the 2007 European Cup final, between Liverpool and AC Milan, a large majority of the tickets for the stadium were sold as corporate tickets. The everyday layman fan could not get a ticket to such a glorious event. Corporates go to the games because they CAN! They have the money and prestige to be able to get tickets to any football game that they want – a sport which is taken so seriously by many men and women across the globe, having this privilege is a status symbol in itself.


Why do fans fret that the owners of the club are not going to be putting enough money into the club to compete for trophies? After all, it has nothing really to do with the fan because it’s not their club. If Liverpool loose 5-0 to Manchester United in a European Cup final it actually doesn’t hold any bearing on the average fan’s real life – gamblers excluded. (It actually made me shudder to write that). Yes your fantasy football team may go from being first in your mini league to bottom, and bragging rights are denied. Again though does this really matter? No.


Twenty Two men run around the pitch and try and put a ball in the back of the net using their feet, head and chest. Why is this so exciting? Why is there a feeling of ecstasy when Liverpool take the score to 3-3 after being 3-0 down to AC Milan in the 2005 European Cup Final? Why is there an even greater feeling when Steven Gerrard lifts the cup way above his head? There is one simple answer – escapism. Watching the game, being at the match chanting or having a laugh with your mates in the pub, you forget about the real world. You forget about your mortgage, your debts, your pregnant wife who you don’t really love, the STD that you picked up last Saturday night, the fact that you think the lad next to you smells like he hasn’t washed for a week, but you will hug him anyway when Torres blasts one into the back of the net. Escapism is one of the main reasons why football became so big in the first place. Long ago when people kicked an inflated pig bladder around, running between villages and fighting along the way, they were in fact escaping from their reality. It became a problem as people were getting seriously hurt or even dying when participating in this early type of football. The winning village would hold the bragging rights; they had the strongest, bravest and most courageous men. This usually meant more women, and more ‘rumpy pumpy’. The rich folk of society couldn’t have this; they didn’t want their workers getting injured. Hence rules were introduced and a safer style of play was invented. Crowds of men were encouraged to watch and participate in games by employers, it kept them away from trouble and participating in other more violent types of sport – bare knuckle boxing, dog fights et cetera.

Football allows us to express our human nature. The need to compete, the need to survive, the need to show who the best really is, and who dominates the territory (the league). It is hard for us to do this in the real world where the poor are kept poorer and the rich get richer. The rich still control us. Football is one of the best things known to man for these reasons and these reasons are why we take it so seriously.

YANKS OUT............... YNWA...............