LADS TALKING ABOUT FOOTBALL: WHY I HATE IT

Sitting at my desk this morning, living out my own personal version of ‘Office Space’ and trying not to think about the upcoming colonic irrigation I’ve somehow got myself scheduled into later this month, I overheard two LADS standing about a foot away from me having a pretty heated discussion about football, so decided to write this article about how ridiculous I think they are rather than doing any work. Part of my decision to do so is based on the fact that, at the risk of pissing off about 90% of my fellow male population: I hate football. Now let’s get

one thing straight, I don’t mean playing football, I think it can be pretty fun and I can see how, if you were good at it, it would be really fun. No, I mean following professional football, which I consider to be one of the most monumental wastes of time, money and effort that any group of human beings chooses to undertake in the world today. However, while I could spend about another thousand words justifying this statement (or more accurately: ranting about football), this particular article is about these LADS, and how I’ve noticed LADS as a whole talkabout football. Its kind of like a nature program where I’m the presenter observing the behaviour of some animals which is completely alien to me and trying to make some kind of sense out of it all.

First off, I love how seriously they take it. Honestly, it’s like they’re two off duty soldiers during World War 2 discussing enemy troop movements and how they’re going to affect the next few months of the war or something. The obvious difference between the reality and the metaphor however, is that for the soldiers in the war, their lives are at stake, and so you could forgive them for talking quite seriously about the subject at hand, whereas for the two LADS talking about football, absolutely NOTHING is at stake. Well apart from maybe a few thousand pounds worth of salary for some people they’ve never met before, and we all know how much of a big worry that can be. While still on the subject of diction, I also love the language that these guys start to employ as soon as they start talking about football. It’s like they’re trying to sound as much like every single football pundit/anyone else that’s ever talked about football as they possibly can. Anyone would think they’d just finished a 3 year course at ‘The Alan Hansen School of Eloquence’ and are keen to show off their credentials for the world to see. They seem to involuntarily start spouting phrases like ‘to be fair’ and ‘at the end of the day’ in between every sentence, and every now and then come out with what they think are hugely profound statements like “I just feel that they’ve lost that belief that they had at the start at the season, and if you’ve lost the belief it doesn’t matter how well you play…you’ve lost the premiership” before pausing for a moment and looking really pleased with themselves. This pundit-style English really cracks me up, especially because I can kind of imagine them practicing these phrases in their heads and keeping them as mental notes for later, probably while imagining themselves on Match of the Day alongside Gary Lineker and Alan Shearer, who are obviously blown away by the sheer depth of their football knowledge.