John Niven on despising the “beautiful” game.
Here’s why he thinks you should too.
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Are you happy, you bunch of animals?
You must be, for it is upon us once more.
Its time has soon come around.
It begins again.
What does, John?
The bloody football season, that’s what.
Speaking as someone who would rather drain the boiling jus from the nut bags of a hundred tramps than watch ninety minutes of football, this is a very difficult time of year. I mean, it’s not like football goes away over the summer, does it?
You’ve got the Euro thing one year, the World Cup the other and, even when any of that isn’t going on, there it is, on the telly, seemingly every single night of the week. Football.
And yet, at this time of the year, you all still seem capable of wetting your pants over all the transfer talk. Wow!
Baboon A is getting an extra ten billion quid a minute to go and play for Team Y rather than Team Z? Awesome. Strap me in.
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“Joey Barton always reminds me of that exchange from A Fish Called Wanda: “Apes don’t read philosophy.” “Yes they do Otto, they just don’t understand it.”
– Niven on his greatest obstacle to liking football, the players
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Being a Scotsman, people often find it genuinely disturbing when they discover I have no interest in football.
When they hear my accent the first thing guys often ask me at parties is, “Well then, Rangers or Celtic?”
(To which I unfailingly shrug and reply, “I just like men. I like you.” This usually puts an end to it.)
There are several reasons I don’t like football, both historical and personal.
Let’s take a look at the big four.
No Team
Growing up, my dad always loved football.
He was a very good player too, running out for the local team and having trials for Scotland’s reserves.
However, he supported no-one. He just liked watching football. (Dad, you utter mental.)
This meant my brother and I grew up with no team loyalty to get us into all the nonsense.
The upside of this was we didn’t get involved in all the sectarian guff that embroiled the west coast of Scotland in the 1970s and ’80s.
As a kid, when I was stopped by a gang of bams and asked that perennial Celtic/Rangers question I’d simply say something like, “I care not for either, thank you good man.”
Boy, it turns out you get beaten up even worse for coming out with something like that than you do for just saying, “I am a massive Fenian/Proddy. Now get bent.”
No Room
I am fairly obsessive about books, movies, music, vintage guitars and food.
I could give you chapter and verse on the exact formation of The New York Dolls while quoting Jaws and some Nabokov, debating the finer points of pre-CBS Fender Telecasters and cooking you a decent boeuf bourguignon.
(Tip: banging on about all this shit will also earn you a fairly decent beating in most parts of the west coast of Scotland.)
Do you really think I have the mental room to remember the whole bunch of balls you need to know to talk about football?
To recall that Herbert Fudblaster threw the corner that set up Nobby Tits to score the winning goal in the FA Cup Semi-Final in 1942 at Sex Offender’s Park when Strathmental were at home to Fisting Wanderers?
Of course I don’t.
The Players
Let’s face it, here we come up against the greatest obstacle to liking football.
Look at them in their post match interviews – these half-wits, chewing their own teeth as though they have just learned how to talk.
Grinding their way through their full emotional range from ‘gutted’ to ‘chuffed’. And that’s the managers.
Back in the ’80s it only took Pat Nevin to admit to liking The Smiths to see him lauded as some colossus of footballing intellect.
Today, at that end of the spectrum, you have Joey Barton, who always reminds me of that exchange from A Fish Called Wanda: “Apes don’t read philosophy.” “Yes they do Otto, they just don’t understand it.”
Or there’s Michael Owen, cheerfully admitting to never having read a book or watched a film in his life.
I mean, not reading, Ok, I get it.
You’re not a bookworm, you’ve been raised from birth to score goals or whatever, but… how do you get through thirty-odd years on the planet and you never see a film?
Surely you’ll catch one by accident at some point? What the hell does Owen do on a long haul flight with no book and no movie? Meditate? Paint? Grow tomatoes?
The Matches
“Ah, you’ve never been to a match. You need to go to a match to get the atmosphere.” Wrong, my friend.
Incredibly, I have indeed been to a football match.
In my previous life as an A&R man one of the bands I signed were Scottish noise terrorists Mogwai.
Mogwai have, shall we say, a fairly robust sense of humour.
Knowing of my loathing of football they made it a condition of their signing to my label that I had to accompany them to see their beloved Celtic.
We duly went to see Celtic play Aberdeen at Celtic Park. Dear God.
The appalling spectacle of the fans I was prepared for but the food, in the name of Christ, the food.
Not to come over all Morrissey, but: pies and chips and the very air stained with the hellish tang of cheap vinegar.
It was, by some distance, the worst two hours of my life. And I’ve seen Muse live.
But sadly, it’s football’s world and I just have to live in it.
So go on, enjoy yourselves. Get stuck in.
In fact, I’m sure you could utilize those two empty summers between Euro and the World Cup.
Why not find a big sponsor and make something else up?
The Durex International seven-a-side Ketamine Challenge Cup?
Because God forbid you should ever have to survive a few months without watching a pack of utter submentals in action.