I have nothing against football, as a game. Kicking a ball about with your mates or brothers can be rather fun, and I have happy memories of doing just that. But lately I’ve been brooding over football culture: the idea that it is more than just a game, that somehow football is linked with masculinity. I dislike the concept that, to be a man, one must like football; I dislike how many people seem to think it’s the be all and end all, and how they think to be able to play football well is a sign of manliness and superiority. It’s just a game, for fucks sake, and a comparatively simple one at that. Personally, I find cricket far superior to watch. As that needs a modicum of intelligence to play. Yet European male society, for the most part, seems obsessed with football.

Here on campus, we have the MMU football Academy, where 20 young laads in red uniforms are taught to play football. I don’t see the point. Surely these lads should be back in school or college learning about something more valuable to themselves and society than how to kick a ball about a field. Leave football to free time. Yet they obviously think that football is the be-all and end-all; that they are so manly, so clever, just because they can kick a ball into a net. For me, the cerebral will always outrank the physical: it is far better, I say, to contribute to society through artistic creation or scholarly research than by trying to assert one’s masculinity through kicking a ball about. After all, where does that leave me? I have no football skills whatsoever, so am I, to them, somehow inferior or less of a ‘man’. The whole of this football culture thus seems somewhat fascist in the way that it prises athleticism and ability. So what if you can kick a ball? It just means you can’t find anything more constructive to do.

I was just in the wes for breakfast. Three or four of these boys in red jackets came in. they’re all no more than eighteen, and on some kind of BTEC or HND. They started to play poker, right there at the table. Now, there’s nothing wrong with a friendly game of cards, but this was for money. I suspect that this, to them, was a display of how manly or adult they are. How vapid?

I suppose I just dislike the whole football as business side of things,, or football as masculine. To me, it is nothing more than a game, and I find those that treat it as anything more essentially vapid.