During a prolonged period of introspection this weekend, I finally worked out a pattern in my life.
Much like (sometimes) altered moods during menstruation, it all goes south for me when there’s an international break, or football is out of season.
Perhaps it’s the boredom of a Saturday afternoon? Or the lack of an outlet for pent up frustration? Whatever it is, I got myself wrapped up in another debate-turned-argument on Sunday.
I was chatting to a bunch of people about my thoughts on the modern game and how much I dislike the way it’s gone.
Because I hadn’t thought out what I was trying to get across, I may have sounded a bit bigoted.
OK, my feelings on things like the money side of the game, diving players, whistle-happy refs and Fifa bungles are all quite straightforward.
But I think it’s my thoughts on old-school match-day experiences that I don’t manage to articulate carefully enough. Or maybe I AM just an old bigot?
You see, growing up in a football environment, local amateur side Hendon FC and Chelsea FC were homes away from home - places that nurtured my love for the game from the age of seven.
But those memories, those places of heart-thumping adrenalin no longer exist.
Well, Claremont Road (Hendon’s home ground) is a ghostly place with decaying stands, collapsed concrete terracing and a swamp for a pitch.
But Stamford Bridge (like all top-flight football arenas) has also died.
And this is where my reasoning - like a collapsing stand - has a perceived dodgy foundation.
I told this bunch of UCT guys and girls that one of the sad things about going to football these days is that grounds are partly filled with tourists and women and kids and middle-class twats who’ve never kicked a ball in their life.
Jeeeeez, did I take a walloping!
I might has well have been an effigy of Donald Trump at an LGBTQ, anti-fascist rally.
It’s so easy to be misunderstood these days it’s not that I think football should be an exclusively male sport, it’s not that it should have class boundaries, it’s just that the atmosphere, loyalty and aggression has dissipated and it just ain’t the same.
I’m not anti-family, in fact I’ve often suggested that PSL teams should adopt family enclosures here, as they did in England in the late 80s. Safe sections where children enter for free with parents.
Armies of loyal fans were built that way, while retaining a proper football experience.
As a kid, my uncle and older brother took me to Anfield, in the Chelsea end.
I remember standing almost paralysed as the Kop sang “You’ll never Walk Alone” at full throttle.
It’s one of the moments that decided my fate as a lifelong fan.
There were 50 000 people singing their hearts out for the team they loved.
That sheer emotional experience can’t be found today and it’s sad.
Everyone is welcome into the football family. It’s the world’s biggest sport, it breaks racial, cultural, religious and gender boundaries, but it’s also got to a stage where its identity, its working-class roots, the meaning to those people and communities it once had, has been systematically taken away.
The average fan has been priced out the game in England, standing in seating areas, swearing or gesticulating can have you thrown out the ground.
I’m not condoning hooligan behaviour, but what we’re left with is a money-churning business that’s lost its soul.
It’s the spaza, Pick n Pay, scenario.
I see “safe standing” is back on the agenda in the UK.
For an attempt to try and raise the atmosphere, it looks more like an attempt to further dehumanise fans by lining them up in rows of pig pens.
Anyway, international break rant over Spurs v Liverpool is the lunchtime kickoff on Saturdaycome on!