Let’s face it. Modern football is terrible. The news is filled with the same regurgitated pap about the same six teams over and over again. The owners are all amoral sociopaths who know the price of everything and the value of nothing. The administrators are all self-serving narcissists more concerned only with where their next backhander is coming from and how to make sure that no football supporter can possibly get a ticket for any event they’ve organised. The players are media-trained to within an inch of their lives to avoid the risk of ever saying anything remotely interesting. The journalists are obsessed only with retaining access and maintaining their own walled-off inner circle, so would never ask the players anything interesting anyway. The clubs indulge in everything from grotesque over-spending to disgusting hypocrisy to avoid angering their worldwide “fanbase”, while ignoring those who fill the stadium every week.
Although at university 15 years ago I had no personality except that which could be derived from football, imperceptibly over time I drifted away from the game, ending up having only the most theoretical interest in the sport, spending more time playing FM16 than watching anyone actually kicking a ball. It got to a point where I’d been to two matches in four years.
So I took the only reasonable course of action. I bought a season ticket for a team guaranteed to be in a relegation battle, and dived headfirst into a fanbase that speak in two languages, only one of which I had even a tenuous grasp on. I tried to step away from the pit that is online football discourse and remember that people who want rid of the 3pm blackout or live 10´000 km away from the city of the club they pretend to support don’t really matter.
This season, I’ve watched football with my friends in four different countries. I’ve seen the two great Portuguese stadiums (sorry Sporting fans). I’ve been there for two heart-breaking penalty shootouts. While Qatar were playing the opening game of their blood-soaked World Cup, I was with about 120 other poor souls trying to hide from the rain while CSD Arzua got spanked by Rapido de Bouzas in Spain’s 5th tier. I saw Galicia win the UEFA Regions Cup and spark calls for the return of their own national team. I’ve witnessed the breakout of the future best midfielder in Europe, and watched him burst out in tears after rescuing Celta from relegation on the final day of the season.
But more than anything, I’ve remembered why football is the dominant cultural invention of the last 150 years – what makes it so special – ubiquitous yet parochial.
Football isn’t Twitter, or Tiktok, or the TV screen. It’s the stadium, and the people inside it. It’s the drinks before, the trying to avoid the rush for the bus afterwards. It’s your friends and your family, and the strangers that you spend 19 days a year with until they know you better than anyone who follows you on Instagram. It’s a real thing that is simultaneously totally unimportant and the most important thing in the world. We should be protective of it, and stand up for it against everyone who doesn’t think it matters, even when they might be the majority. Sure, some of it has gone already and possibly forever, but there’s still plenty left to spend a lifetime with.
Goalposts For Goalposts 
