It's not about the Football.... Honest.
The internet has been awash with football of late, or soccer as they like to say over here and, well... nowhere else.
Speaking to the few Americans I have met that are very keen on football I have noticed a trend. They are usually bleary-eyed, stinking of drink, and regaling me about their excellent evening watching a game the night before.
If not that, they are avidly speaking about the game sat across from me in a pub or a bar.
It made me realize something that I have never before considered. Despite having an awful tattoo of my local football team emblazoned on one arm, and having a season ticket for several years before I joined the military, it has never been about the football.
Its a social event.
And I guarantee that all of the fans that treat it as such come to love the beautiful game. Even if like me, they don't actually spend that much time watching the football, and even if they do, often remember little of it the morning after anyway.
Every match I ever saw with my Dad, or my Grandfather, or my friends, has absolutely always involved drinking in several pubs for a few hours beforehand, and then drinking in several pubs for many hours afterwards.
Essentially, its an excuse for a social event. Its an excuse to ditch the kids at your mothers house, forget about that coursework for a day, leave the newspaper closed, leave the office early. You then meet a group of friends and spend a good few hours drinking socially, interspersed with a little topical football.
If you are an American and you are reading this, you might be thinking "Yes that is all well and good but I think soccer sucks" If that is the case, try going along with your friends anyway the next time you get an invite. You can even sit with your back to the screen, because doubtless there will be plenty of other people doing the exact same thing, and you can spot them easily if you are all facing in the same direction and perhaps make some new friends as well.
Humans are social animals, and absolutely any excuse for a get-together in these stressful modern times should be treated as a good one.
Football works so well because it can be your excuse, and nobody has to die. You don't need to wait until your Aunt gets hit by a train to get together with your relatives and have a drink in a big room, you can do it at the pub under the pretense of watching a game.
Its probably why it is a very male thing to do, because we are famously bad at staying in touch. My wife and her mother talk all the time, her mother calls her sisters all of the time too.
I get on well with my brother, father, uncle, and male cousins, but the only time we speak is when I need to borrow a power tool, when attending a funeral, or possibly when someone has been diagnosed with a terminal illness, and only very briefly then.
So you might not think you like football, but I am asking you to try it anyway, let a game be the excuse you need. Drink, talk, sing, be merry, enjoy yourself.
It isn't about football, its about having some fun, and we shouldn't need an excuse to do that but the older we get, the more it seems like we really do need one.
