Saturday 6th 2001 – The day of reckoning.

Last saturday was an important day for many of us around Europe, it was a day that affected us here in England and will change how many of us live our lives for the next year. 12 million watched television focused on the outcome, breathes held and hearts thumping, just hoping against hope that there wouldn’t be a repeat of previous tragedies.

By 5pm we knew what had happened, yes that’s rights England are in the World Cup.

Now yes I know many will say it’s only football, 22 grown men chasing a bag of air around a field for 90 minutes and we should remember that those people are entitled to their opinions no matter how wrong they are. After all I can guarantee that no matter how much someone dislikes the game if an annoying gum chewing Scot came up to them and offered them £50,000 a week they would play.

But football is more than that it’s just as, if not more, important to those who watch it as it is to those who play it. Football (or soccer if you’re an American) has power and should be respected and don’t worry I do have reasons:

  1. It can affect you physically; research in Italy has shown that some Italians care so much about their teams that when they aren’t playing well the stress can give them stomach ulcers.
  2. It can affect you mentally; don’t believe me, well how many examples can you give of something (other than girlfriends, wives etc) that can have a guy dancing in the street one minute or crying in his beer the next. From my own experience the recent Tottenham vs Manchester United match is a good example at half time when Tottenham were winning 3-0 I was slightly annoyed but when it finished 5-3 to Manchester United I couldn’t stop laughing for ages "you wont be laughing next time they play, ed".
  3. Football is a true universal language; no seriously if your country plays another country and wins you can make fun of them and they’ll know you are even without you understanding a word that they say.

The last thing though that I would like to say that football can also be a unifying force where people come together, leave their worries behind and just watch the game. Liberians has been known to stop its civil wars just to watch their national team and lets not forget the old story of the Allies and the Germans playing a game of football on Christmas day during WW1. You can get together with a group of strangers and have a good time watching your team play. Of course you do get hooligans but they are nothing to do with football they just use it as cover to go rioting. If there are any hooligans reading this then well done you worked out how to turn the computer on AND you can read, you’ll go far in life (well you’ll be able to fill out your parole form on your own anyway).

To end I’d like to make one last really brief point:

ENGLAND ARE IN THE WORLD CUP!!