Didn’t Football Used To Be Fun?

Our Vital Spurs ed wrote this, I thought how apt so I’ve stolen it. I can do that, I’m so powerful you know?!?!

From oxspur:

Football was fun!!!

Now I seem to remember a time in the dim and distant past when football was a game, not the life or death business it seems to be today.

Money has taken over the game, but worse than that, fans now have gone to unbelievable extremes of emotion, and instead of supporting their team and enjoying the game, it has become all consuming in a win at all costs mentality that is just as damaging to the game as billionaire oligarchs owners who seem intent to stop at nothing in their efforts to be the biggest and the best.

Now I have to confess to being as guilty as many of you that are reading this. I accept that a defeat or poor performance will ruin my weekend and sadly this applies to a lesser extent to kids football, which I coach. I may not rant at these ten year olds, but the result still eats away at me, as I pick apart what went wrong and what can be better the next time. I know I am not alone, I can see and hear the Mums and Dads, even those who don`t have the slightest clue about the game.

We do the same with our beloved club. We laud success in extreme fashion, yet treat even the narrowest defeat as if it were the end of the world and dissect team selection and tactics to the minutest detail, yet in truth we have totally lost sight of what really matters and that is supporting our team and enjoying the game of football.

I find it a mixture of sad and amusing that fans of the same team can argue and abuse each other in the name of supporting a football team. Sure we are on the same side and we will disagree over players, tactics, formations etc, but again we forget it is supposed to be fun and sites like this are about discussing a common ground with like minded people, but football has sadly gone beyond that now and instead of being a fun distraction at the end of the week, has now become a 24/7 all consuming monster that rules our lives.

If we look at our mindset, football possibly ranks right up there with the really important issues in life. We will obviously deny that it is more important than our wives, kids, work and finances, and of course it should never get in the way of them, but if we add up the time we watch, talk about or read and write about the game, we probably spend more hours living in the world of football than talking with our partners or playing with our kids. Now that is quite sad, but also true in so many cases.

Rightly or wrongly, I cannot see this situation changing. 24 hour media from SkySports to sites like this are here to stay and therefore I can only see the passion intensifying rather than going back to a simple enjoyment of the game, which in turn adds pressure to owners and managers to win games and perhaps invest what they don`t have in search of success that may never happen and even when it does we are never happy as we simply up our expectations instead of enjoying the moment, which makes that pressure all the more intense.

Now this season, I am determined to bring back the love and enjoyment of the game I have lost sight of. The aim is to simply take things as they happen. I have no control over how my team play or what results they get, so why should I get so emotional? Instead I intend to be philosophical, win lose or draw. Was it a good game and contest? Did we play well? Was I as a supporter entertained?

Now of course I fully intend to smile through defeat and will regularly use the phrase of “Its only a game”. I won`t ever abuse one of my players or the referee again, after all they are all trying the best they can and don`t deliberately miss an open goal or fail to spot that blindingly obvious penalty… Do I honestly believe I can do it? Of course I can….