It’s that time again: the biennial international football tournament.
For the next few months every man I meet, or even pass within 600 metres of, will automatically assume that I have football fever burning through my terraced soul like Bovril magma; especially since this is the first time that Scotland has qualified for a major tournament since 1998. Ah, I remember those days. Not in a tremendously detailed way, of course, because it was fucking ages ago and my brain is now a misted, hiccuping wreck. But I remember the times well enough to state with some certainty that in 1998 I certainly wasn’t sporting a subtle pair of breasts like I am now, or housing a set of lungs like a couple of burned bean-bags.
One important thing hasn’t changed since 1998: I’m still utterly indifferent to football. How I dread that conversational opener: ‘You watching the game tonight?’ It’s not really a question though. It’s a statement; one that doesn’t so much militarise itself against contradiction as exist blissfully unaware of the faintest possibility of contradiction. So when I respond ‘No’ something dulls and sinks in the asker’s eyes, like they’ve just found out their favourite Muppet from childhood is a serial killer. They back away from my potentially contagious apathy and ignorance, perhaps imagining that even thirty-seconds in my company could transform them from burly football fanatics into springy-legged ballet enthusiasts. Sometimes they’ll probe for a reassuring sporting corollary, refusing to believe that there isn’t at least a kernel of testosterone swimming somewhere in my feminised bloodstream, however far or faint:
“Ah, so you’re a rugby man, then?”
“Nope.”
“Cricket?”
“Nope.”
“Tennis?”
“Nope.”
Panic clouds their eyes.
“Darts?”
“Nope.”
At this point I can see that I’ve almost destroyed them, along with their fragile sense of the world.
“Tiddlywinks???”
I used to lie. I’d wade in to a conversation armed only with my baseline knowledge of football (which largely consisted of knowing that people kicked a ball about a bit of grass, and tried to put it in a goal), and, over the course of the day – speaking to many people – would accrue details of past games and future fixtures, nurturing a conversational snowball that gained in size and speed with every meeting, that I could roll throughout the day until, finally, I was a walking avalanche of footballing punditry.
I’d casually freestyle about how the star striker fared in a cup final eight years previously, or angrily decry the manager’s lousy tactics. I’d even cite the offside rule apropos of nothing, simply to cement my status as Jimmy Hill incarnate. At that stage of glorious metamorphosis I wouldn’t wait to have my input requested. I’d actively hunt people with whom to talk about football:
“You, boy! Yes, you! You’re gonna listen up here, because Christie shouldn’t have played the 4-4-2 formation, he should’ve favoured a more defensive 5-3-2 formation, especially since the other side were fielding Juarez, and as we all know he’s scored an average of 33 goals a year for his club side over the past three years, well worth his fucking asking price of £14million if you ask me, lovely chap, he got married last year, I believe it was a Tuesday in Shrewsbury, left-handed he is, used to play for… ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME??”
“Sorry, I …eh… I don’t really follow football?”
“YOU DON’T FOLLOW??…. YOU FUCKING FAIRY!…
…How do you feel about tiddlywinks?”
I’m often envious of the passion and camaraderie that swirls around football; that tribal feeling of belonging to a shared universe – with its own unique history, language, struggles and victories – the membership of which has always eluded me. But I just can’t get myself worked up about 22 strangers houfing a sphere of inflated leather up and down a bit of grass for 90 minutes, however much I try. And I certainly don’t understand how it is that the sight of 11 strangers wearing the team colours of Scotland is supposed to fill me with patriotic fervour, or how the performance of said players should in any way affect my self-esteem.
English football-loving friends and acquaintances love to ramp up the banter on occasions such as these, hoping I’ll bite, but I never do, simply because I couldn’t give a flying bag of fucks about the outcome. Whether Scotland wins 10-nil, are defeated 10-nil, or they all ride out onto the field on ostrich-back dressed as pirates while ritually sacrificing mice to a Babylonian god, my psyche remains unmoved and intact.
In saying that, I’m not entirely immune to being stirred by the fortunes of my ball-kicking countrymen, even if all I feel is a pre-programmed twitch of investment; an echo of give-a-fuck-iness. I’ll admit to a mild twinge of relief and comfort when Scotland drew with England, but I think that was probably down to a sense of happiness that millions of English people would be disappointed.
I didn’t watch Scotland’s final game in the Euros, but I did keep checking the score on my phone, at first finding myself relieved, then despondent. For a moment I worried I might be developing some rudimentary form of misguided patriotism, but, luckily, roughly 3.5 seconds after clocking the end result – a drubbing, predictably – I realised I still didn’t really give a fuck, and what fuck I did give was so tiny it wasn’t worth worrying about: a baby Fuck; Fuck Jnr.; Tyrion Fuckister; a miniscule, microscopic mote of a fuck that was already dead; the ghost of a fuck.
Renton from Trainspotting once said: “It’s shite being Scottish.”
To which I would respond: “Only if you let it be.”
Anyway, I can’t sit here professing dislike for football all day. I’m off to see how big Tam McGlintoch gets on in the International Tiddlywinks Olympics.
READ ABOUT HOW FOOTBALL RUINED MY HOLIDAY HERE
Next time: Football and salmonella.