Haha this made me laugh Rich! I often go to Sheffield Wednesday games as one of my best friends (NT) is a Wednesday fan. The other NT friends support Barnsley and Everton and I support Scarborough.
I must be an exception too as my 'special interest' (hate using that term for will for the benefit of proving my point) is football and always has been. I'm obsessed and rarely think about anything else but you are spot on. Football attracts morons. They are everywhere and I've been all over the country watching football and some of the things I've seen and heard you would not believe.
The morons are partly the reason I have changed teams and dropped into non league obscurity with Scarborough as down at that level it's a tenner to get in, everyone is really friendly, they don't all look like chavs with stone island jackets, white trainers and burberry caps and chant vile things at passing females. I couldn't ever give up football so I had to eventually reconsider giving up supporting a bigger more mainstream club because it just got too much for me.
The beer culture, the aggression, the sick chanting, the appalling behaviour of large groups of people, the 'you looking at me?' attitude, the tense feeling of agitation around the ground. It is all so unnecessary, so pathetic and so unpredictable and I struggled.
I went to the Derby v Nottingham Forest match last year and when I saw bus loads of Forest fans being driven past the ground with grown men hanging out of windows shouting stuff at passers by, banging on windows like caged prisoners and just looking like they were all on a huge stag party I just took one look at my mate and we went home. Didn't even go to the game. Not been to a league game anywhere since.
The tribalism is embarrassing and honestly, when I saw those buses going past I struggled to believe that humans had ever evolved.
You mention the money that footballers get too which I agree is insane. You can pay around £35 to get in at Hillsborough to watch a game that won't be that much better in quality than if you paid £10 and watched Scarborough Athletic v Goole Town in the Evo Stik north division 1.
Admittedly in better surroundings but when you consider that the Sheffield Wednesday player 'earns' around £60k a week and the Scarborough player earns around £500 to a thousand pounds then is the entertainment you get from paying £25 more a ticket really that much better?
I just think that a large proportion of football fans in the UK are stupid because they aren't open minded and are blinded by this tribalism and ridiculous loyalty thing. If Sheffield Wednesday charged £100 a game then there would be people who would still pay it.
I love football, it's my life but it's not been easy sailing with the HFA as I hate many of the things associated with the game.
It will always remain the beautiful game to me but nowadays run by, played by and mainly supported by not so beautiful people.
Yes, football (soccer for those living in the USA) does attract "morons" and it manifests their primitive tribal instinct which takes them over, it never used to be like this many years ago however. My late grandad was always a
Birmingham City (AKA. Blues) fan since he was a child and as a very young child he even took me to a few games (I found it boring however lol). When he was young they never segregated home and away fans because there wasn't any need, rival fans used to have friendly debates with each other, but that was all, there was never any trouble. Imagine mixing home and away fans today! As my grandad grew up he saw how football in the UK changed for the worse, how home and away fans started having to be segregated and how it all went downhill after that. He hated the trouble, but he still went because he enjoyed watching the game so much and didn't want to give in to it. When he was a pensioner however he went to a match and had his car windows put through by hooligans, he had it repaired and a few weeks later exactly the same thing happened again. Enough was enough and he realised that at his age he just couldn't cope any more with the violence. This is a very sad story because it shows how the trouble at football matches is preventing many true supporters and fans from attending the games, then what happens? Well often true supporters are replaced by more "morons" and the problem gets even worse.
Birmingham City (The Blues) hate
Aston Villa (The Villa) even though they're both based in Birmingham. Local derbies have to be extra heavily policed and there is still trouble every time they play each-other because often fighting breaks out away from the ground. What's even worse is to some extent movies like
Green Street have a certain level of truth, for instance The Blues have a strong "firm" or "army" called
The Zulus who are particularly feared in Birmingham. To me this is pathetic, but it still goes on and people are for some reason proud to become a part of it.
Now people, watch this and tell me that football doesn't attract "morons" as
@Rich Allen stated earlier:
This video wrongfully makes it look kind of appealing, but it's very wrong and it sickens me that this is my home town in Birmingham UK, these are so called Birmingham City "fans" and some may be part of
The Zulus, but it also happens all over the UK. Now you can see why my grandad and many other true supporters had enough going to Birmingham City matches. Also would you take your children to such a game? Well football clubs are always doing their best trying to encourage families to take their children as they constantly need new blood, okay they have family stands, but the children still often see the violence and outside the ground there are sometimes incidents too.
Here is a list of some of the better known football hooligan firms so people can see how widespread and organised this violence has become:
List of hooligan firms - Wikipedia
Unfortunately any true supporters who don't cause trouble are often tarred with the same brush when they say they love football, not every football fan is like this, but many people including autistic people will stay away because they don't want to be associated, plus autistic people more often hate noise, lots of people and especially hate violence.
PS: For a short eye opening documentary about The Zulus from someone on the inside, please
click here, again it's pro-violence and viewers are advised discretion, in fact this is more like a recruitment film and it even promotes equal racial rights as part of the recruitment campaign to make them sound more appealing. It's obviously all wrong!
.
