I don't understand the thrill of the game

[venta]

Today I've had Xfm on, streaming from my computer. It's sufficiently cool today that we don't need the aircon on, so I can hear music properly. Most of the DJs have talked about the football, everyone who's called in has been asked about/mentioned it. Some of the adverts are football orientated. There's even been adverts for a club which is "the only place to be after the match".

Over on elle_'s journal, it's clear that companies all over the place are using the match as an excuse for a jolly. Someone else mentioned that their company is shutting up shop early this afternoon.

Now, I'm not a football fan, not even at times like this. I come from a family of sport-despisers. When a passing French bloke tried to take the piss on Sunday night, it was completely lost on me because, though I knew there was a match on, I hadn't known it was against France, and at that point I didn't know England had lost.

I know there are plenty of people out there who're not bothered about footy. So, without wanting lots of frothing comments along the lines of how the match tonight is getting in the way/sodding up your plans/annoying you: what percentage of the population cares ?

The prevalence of the little car-flags, the quietness of the streets when there's a game, everything else suggests "near 100". But a surprisingly high percentage of my friends are rabidly anti-. Is this just me knowing an unrepresentative sample ? Is it that the football apathists are just much quieter about their apathy than the supporters are about their support ? That people are worried they'll be deemed sad, uncool, unpatriotic or pummelled if they admit they don't give a stuff ?

I'm genuinely curious.

Comments

[arralethe.livejournal.com]

I can't see the point in watching sport in my precious free time. Sorry, but I just can't - football, rugby, competitive shoelace tying...it's all very very lost on me.

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

Is it me, or is this a post that screams out for a poll?

[erming.livejournal.com]

Well it's not easy to avoid the football at the current time.

If you go about it takes over the radio, it takes over the pubs and even the in store radio.

Luckily I'm able to avoid it by judicious use of news web sites, going to Wetherspoon pubs listening to certain radio shows but mostly by listening to CDs.

Commalies by Lacuna Coil being my current distraction, previous being Labyrithe der sinne by Tanzwut.

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

It could be worse - Christmas is even more intrusive.

[broadmeadow.livejournal.com]

I care only in as much that if we lose and go out of the contest then we'll probably hear less about the rest of it, and that would be a Good Thing. So come on you, er, Swiss. I think. And well played, France!

The idea of actually giving up an hour and a half of my life to watch a bunch of over-paid prima-donnas poncing about doesn't appeal at all.

Still, at least it's keeping Coronation Street off the tv.

[waistcoatmark.livejournal.com]

When I was out in the garden Sunday evening I suddenly heard a diffuse cheer from all around me. There are obviously enough people who like footy that the sum of their living-room-based cheers can be heard throughout a town.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

I think my views on football are sufficiently well documented.

There are lots of good games in the world. A few of them are even physical sports. Soccer is, from my perspective, one of the worst.

I used to think it had no strategy in it at all. However, Toby and onebyone persuaded me otherwise. I now concede that there are some mildly clever things one can contemplate by way of team strategy which are totally eclipsed by the individual skills of the players, the usual barbarian behaviour (contact between players, borderline fouls etc.) and just general randomness.

I'd rather watch a football match than Big Brother, but it's a very close call.

It's the cynic me

[wimble.livejournal.com]

I'm just waiting for the moment when all these people realise that spending millions of pounds on assorted George Crosses is not going to make a blind bit of difference to whether the England Football team actually win or not.

And whether they take them all down when England get kicked out (which will demonstrate their stupidity: if you're going to support the team, then they surely need more support when they lose).

[grumblesmurf.livejournal.com]

But a surprisingly high percentage of my friends are rabidly anti-. Is this just me knowing an unrepresentative sample ? Is it that the football apathists are just much quieter about their apathy than the supporters are about their support ? That people are worried they'll be deemed sad, uncool, unpatriotic or pummelled if they admit they don't give a stuff ?

Nah, I don't think so.

Perhaps it's more likely that the people you know have something between their ears and therefore have no interest in watching overpaid idiots prancing around a field kicking a pig's bladder round.

Me, I sincerely hope we lose tonight, that the 'fans' go wild and cause mayhem, and that UEFA decide England need to be booted out the competition and can't play in any international for a number of years. That would be some degree of satisfaction for being bombarded with football this, Beckham that, Goran-Erikson the other for months on fucking end. Seems there's no end to the football season these days - at least you used to get a break while something equally dull like Wimbledon was on.

Marx was right in all bar one respect - it's football and not religion that's the opium of the masses. And opiates screw you up in any great volume. Go figure.

Now, there are sports that I will watch. Sometimes even so far as to get up at ungodly times of the night to watch. But football ain't one of them - so much for it being a team sport - looks to me like it's a disparate bunch of individuals claiming to play as a team. Tactics seem limited to booting the ball up the field and trying to cause physical injury to the opposition while claiming yourself to have been mortally injured if an opponent so much as looks shifty at you. And these buffoons are paid how much?

Still, at least we're got the satisfaction of not being a fuckwit.

[al-fruitbat.livejournal.com]

I've loathed foopball ever since I was forced to play and watch it at school (inter-house league matches, where the rest of the 'house' had to go to the sopggy sports fields after school and 'support' your 'team' - basically a form of institutionalised detention, where my definition of 'support' was 'hoping one of those fuckwits breaks a leg')

The only vague amusement I get from it is when the english mob get so soundly defeated that the foopball fans start acting like a cat that's fallen out of a tree. Match? What match? Tournament? Nah, don't know anything about that, mate...

[triskellian]

I was vaguely aware, from the prevalence of those idiotic car flags, that there was some sort of football going on at the moment. I had no idea there was a game (match?) today until my boss came in and made some joke about robbing a bank this afternoon at 5, which he then had to explain to me.

I think it's the general football-apathy among non-football fans that means you don't notice 'em much (although of course their numbers could also be lower than those of the fans). Why bother talking about something you don't care about, even if only to say you don't care? Although I have said to several people today that the sooner 'we' are out of the competition, the better, as far as I'm concerned.

[satyrica.livejournal.com]

I'm not *bothered* about it but I do vaguely follow it: I grew up in a very sporty family so I kinda have an instinctual affinity for sport despite the depths of my personal incompetence and disinterest; I think it's cool when my country wins but it doesn't distress me when they don't.

[surje.livejournal.com]

i'm rabidly anti, and am proud to not know that there is a game on or who it is against, and very happy if i do find out that we lose.

[kauket.livejournal.com]

I love watching the football, and in many ways it's fun to feel like you are united with a group of people in one place all cheering and supporting something. Walking round the streets and seeing everyone happy when we win, cheering at people you walk past wearing England shirts, commiserating together when we lose, all slagging off calamity James.

Apathy I can live with. I don't like cricket much, I let it drift past me.

But what really really pisses me off is people saying they hope England will lose so people will stop going on about it/it'll take up less tv time/whatever. Why would you want to deprive people of something that give them fun and joy, just because you get a bit pissed off at seeing flags/ITV (woohoo, quality programming) is taken up with a game / it's on the front page of a trashy tabloid. I get a bit fed up with the amount of cricket that can be on, but it doesn't mean I want us to lose.

I feel it's a bit like saying 'I hate your favourite TV show and I hope it's cancelled half way through the series.'

Anyway. Sorry. It's been really pissing me off

[verlaine.livejournal.com]

Nothing against football, as a game. Everything against *football fans*, for whom it's not a game, but a gladiatorial contest to prove that WE are better than YOU. A lot of the worst examples of this gang-of-thugs mentality seem to be English. So, yes, I hope England loses the football, because until people like that are weeded out of the terraces frankly "we" don't deserve to win.

[cardinalsin.livejournal.com]

Meh. I'm not into football, but I'm not rabidly anti-it. I even "watched" (by which I mean, had on as background noise) the England v. Switzerland match.

I agree that football dominating the telly is annoying - but be honest people, is there anything better on normally? And equally, is this phenomenon confined to football? Other sports seem to be just as bad (snooker, formula 1, tennis (though I like tennis), horse racing). Some days the same problem seems to arise with christian worship programs, which I have even less time for than sports.

I do think you know an unrepresentative sample of people though, and despite onebyone's rebuttal, it is to do with intelligence (albeit not a direct relationship). I'm not saying all football supporters are thick, but the educated bits of society tend to follow sport less IMO, perhaps because they were crap at it at school. Likewise geeky people, who I would hazard make up some unusually large percentage of your friendbase.

I go home now.

It's times like this when I need a "Statto" icon

[jiggery-pokery.livejournal.com]

what percentage of the population cares ?

That's a very bateleur-esque space before the question mark. :-)

I've been thinking about this on and off for much of the day, and I would estimate the percentage as being between 40% and 70%. It really depends upon your definition of "cares"; there is a long and continuous scale between antipathy and, er, pathy. (Propathy?)

The source of my figure is largely based upon TV viewing figures. Important England football matches attract between 15 million and 20 million registered TV viewers, but there is sufficient doubt about the TV ratings methodology which does not take into account viewers at pubs and clubs that it is not unreasonable to increase that to between 20 million and 30 million. Then we play around with people who care about football but didn't see the match, or who saw the match but would not self-identify as caring about football, and we work out what proportion of the population is ineligible to answer one way or the other, and get something like "between 40 and 70". At least, I do.

At one end of the spectrum, I would estimate there are probably about 600,000 club season-ticket holders in the UK and perhaps 2%-10% of the population who would identify that football is one of the most important influences in their life (cf religion, their significant other and so on). I would pluck figures out of the air that perhaps 10% of men and perhaps 40% of women had antipathy towards football, with the rest being apathetic.