ATTENDING A MATCH
WHAT TO WEAR
Excessive smartness is the only thing to avoid. Jeans and casual clothing are perfectly acceptable. Many fans wear replica shirts, either in the team’s current home strip or their away strip. It is common to have your favourite player’s name printed on the back of your shirt, but as modern footballers change clubs more often than they change their socks, this can prove an unwise investment.
To gain credibility, a much more cunning ruse is to wear a shirt from years, if not decades, ago. This implies a lifelong commitment to the club. Such shirts can often be bought from charity shops in the relevant town or city. But take care to buy one a size too small for you, so giving the impression that it has shrunk from years of washing.
BEFORE THE MATCH
Never get to the match too early. The skilled bluffer will delay arriving at his seat until about three minutes before kickoff. You may think this strange, in that soaking up the atmosphere is presumably a crucial part of any match-day experience. But soaking up beer is a far more crucial part of the match-day experience for regular fans. They are used to the ground, attending it as they do on a fortnightly basis. Consequently, you should attempt to fit in by looking as blasé as possible about the whole experience.
Under no circumstances should you take photos at a match. This will instantly mark you out as a football arriviste of the worst kind.
If you arrive at your seat slightly earlier, you will witness two sights for which it is important to be prepared:
Having warmed up, the players return to their dressing rooms and prepare for the match proper. This is where the atmosphere really builds up, and as the teams run out, the home fans cheer their side in an attempt to intimidate the opposition. Clubs also play music to aid this process. Crystal Palace, for instance, run out to ‘Glad All Over’ by the Dave Clark Five – a triumph of hope over expectation if ever there was one.
Another tradition at this point is for fans to throw torn-up tickets into the air, as a sort of football confetti. If their team has been on a particularly bad run of form, season ticket holders have been known to tear up the ticket for next week’s match.
FOOTBALL KIT
Wherever you’re watching football, different makes of shirts, shorts and boots will be on display. This provides an opportunity for you to reveal your knowledge about the various kit brands and how they got their names. You can guarantee that at least one of the following brands will feature in any match you see, so becoming familiar with them will give you significant bluffing potential:
Umbro Supplier of kit to many leading nations and clubs (for instance, Manchester City won their 2012 Premier League title wearing Umbro shirts). The name derives from the firm’s founding in 1924 by the Humphreys brothers Harold and Wallace, in Cheshire. The latter has now slipped to second in the list of Most Famous People Called Wallace From the North-west of England.
Adidas founded in 1948 by the German Adi (Adolf) Dassler, after he fell out with his brother and partner Rudolf, with whom he’d been running an existing sportswear company.
Puma Not to be outdone, Rudolf Dassler formed his own company to compete with Adidas. At first he followed the pattern of using the first few letters of each name, and called it Ruda. Soon, however, he looked to the world of speedy animals for inspiration, and chose the name by which his firm would become famous. Just think, if the two brothers had got together, they could have set out to conquer the world.
Nike Pronounced ‘nye-key’ in the USA and by the company itself, but often rhymed with ‘bike’ in the UK. An American sportswear company named after the Greek goddess of victory. Its famous ‘Swoosh’ logo was designed in 1971 by a graphic design student doing some freelance work for Nike’s founder, Phil Knight. She was paid $35 (although Knight later gave her some shares in the company as extra payment). At the time, Knight said of the logo: ‘I don’t love it, but maybe it will grow on me’. By 2012 his holding in Nike gave him a personal fortune of $14.4bn. We can assume the Swoosh has grown on him quite a lot by now.
ASICS The name stands for ‘anima sana in corpore sano’, a variation on the Latin phrase that means ‘a healthy mind in a healthy body’. Yet more influence from the classics. Players who are seldom famed for their literacy are running around wearing kit plastered in Ancient Greek and Latin.
NICKNAMES
Every football club has at least one nickname, and by using some of these you’ll demonstrate your familiarity with the sport. It is always a good idea therefore to find out in advance the nickname of the opposing team, so that you can say knowledgeably, for example: ‘That’s the problem with the “Nobblers”. No finesse, and too much reliance on kicking opposition players out of the game.’ Some nicknames are straightforward – ‘the Reds’, ‘the Blues’, ‘the Claret and Blues’, ‘the Sky Blues’, ‘the Black and Blues’ (that’s either Inter Milan or a team regularly getting a good kicking). Others, though, have more intriguing origins:
Arsenal ‘The Gunners’; has its origins in the club’s first home south of the Thames near Woolwich Arsenal. Their north London neighbours, Spurs, spend much of their time exhorting them to return there.
Everton ‘The Toffees’; so-called because the club used to hire someone to throw complimentary toffees into the crowd before a game. And there was a toffee shop near the ground. Take your pick.
Bristol Rovers ‘The Gas’; Rovers’ old ground, Eastville, was next to a gasworks. The name was originated by fans of local rivals Bristol City as a term of abuse, but Rovers supporters have adopted it as a badge of pride.
Walsall ‘The Saddlers’; links to the local saddle-making industry.
Norwich City ‘The Canaries’; the team wear bright yellow. That’s about it.
Ipswich Town ‘The Tractor Boys’; a less-than-respectful reference by opposition fans to the largely agriculturally employed nature of the club’s supporter base. Sensibly, the Ipswich fans have adopted it with gusto.
West Bromwich Albion ‘The Baggies’; the club was originally the works team of a local iron foundry whose staff wore trousers known as ‘baggies’. Or the name given to the huge bags used to collect the money from ticket sales. Again, take your pick.
Charlton Athletic ‘The Addicks’; their players used to love eating haddock, and also offered it to their opponents after matches in a show of hospitality.
Barnsley ‘The Tykes’; apparently a nickname for Yorkshiremen.
West Ham United ‘The Irons’; a reference to the club’s origins as the team of Thames Ironworks Ltd. Also known as ‘The Hammers’ (although this apparently has nothing to do with the club’s location).
Watford ‘The Hornets’; the team strip is red and yellow.
Bury ‘The Shakers’; before Bury played Blackburn Rovers in the 1892 Lancashire Cup Final, their chairman JT Ingham said: ‘We shall shake ’em!’ They duly did (winning by a comfortable margin), and the name stuck. Another gem to throw in whenever Bury are mentioned is that their name (‘Bury’, not their nickname) is the shortest of any of the top 92 English clubs.
DURING THE MATCH
Apart from the 22 players, there will be a number of other personnel involved in proceedings:
THE REFEREE
This is an officious-looking individual, normally dressed in black, who runs around in the middle of the play and blows his whistle at apparently random intervals.
There are several items a referee must take onto the pitch with him: a watch, a notebook (with red and yellow cards), a whistle, and a complete refusal to believe that he is not the sole reason that everyone has turned up to watch the match.
THE LINESMEN
These are the two men, sometimes women, with flags who run up and down the touchlines, aiding the referee on decisions. Most of these will be about offside, and thus complete guesswork, but they also help out on other matters. For instance, throw-ins; the linesman will wait to see who picks up the ball to take the throw, and then quickly point his flag in the appropriate direction as though he knew all along which player the ball had come off.
In the late 1990s the game’s authorities renamed linesmen ‘assistant referees’. The bluffer should not use this preposterous term; no one else does. Not even linesmen.
THE FOURTH OFFICIAL
This self-regarding individual patrols the area near the managers’ dugouts, in case they have the impertinence to question any of the referee or linesmen’s decisions. His main role is to get his ‘hair dried’ (see ‘Glossary’) by the two managers and their acolytes, and to shrug his shoulders in what is meant to be a ‘Not my decision, mate’ sort of way. In fact, it is unlikely that any fourth official in their short history in the game has ever attempted to overturn a match referee’s decision. Thus their only practical role is to hold up the electronic board to indicate how many minutes of added time are to be added. Occasionally they also try to use the same boards to signify the shirt numbers of players involved in a substitution. They rarely get this right.
THE MANAGER
The manager is easy to recognise as he will be the only one in the dugout wearing a suit. (Unless his job has been under threat recently, in which case he will be wearing a tracksuit to imply solidarity with ‘the lads’.)
The manager will spend the entire match pacing up and down the touchline, shouting furious instructions to his players despite the fact that none of them stand a chance of hearing him above the noise of the crowd. Even if they could, none of them would have a clue what he was going on about. The undeniable, but nevertheless touching, futility of this practice provides a metaphor for football as a whole.
THE GOALKEEPING COACH
This coach has nothing to do with the goalkeeper. His job is to sit next to the manager on the bench assuring him that his convictions about the referee being biased are indeed correct.
BALL BOYS
Ball boys and girls are positioned around the edge of the pitch and are there to return the ball quickly to the players. Unless, of course, the players they are meant to return the ball to belong to the opposition team. Then they will delay the return of the ball until they receive a signal from the home bench to indicate that their team is back in position. All footballers are introduced to this sort of gamesmanship from an early age.
STADIUM ANNOUNCER
The announcer usually runs the area’s fifth-best mobile disco, and has microphone skills to match. Never expect to understand a single word uttered by the announcer.
HOW TO BEHAVE
Take your cues from your fellow fans. Cheer, jeer, laugh, applaud, etc., when they do. Don’t worry if you can’t work out why a referee has given a particular decision. Very often he won’t know either. Just make the same noises as the people around you.
Don’t be surprised when a player appeals for (say) a throw-in when the ball has clearly come off his own shin rather than his opponent’s. This is not cheating. It’s another example of gamesmanship. Everyone in the game of football engages in it, including supporters who will be claiming the same thing, but more volubly.
Don’t be surprised when a player appeals for a throw-in when the ball has clearly come off his own shin.
Equally, you must accept that football supporters are fickle creatures. If a player who has been having an awful game and attracting the condemnation of his fans suddenly scores the winning goal, he will instantly become the best player in the world and his name will be chanted in glowing terms for the rest of the match.
If your team scores, go into raptures of joy.
If the opposition scores, look stunned and disbelieving.
Either way, you will get to witness professional footballers’ goal celebrations. Once a simple case of the firm, manly handshake before returning to the centre circle for the restart, these have now become choreographed epics of which Busby Berkeley would be proud. Teams spend hours on the training ground perfecting their celebration routines, ignoring the fact that if they spent the same amount of time practising their football they might actually have a few more goals to celebrate.
CHANTING
Throughout the match there will be chanting. It is advisable to join in. You needn’t feel self-conscious about every other word you utter being an obscenity. Normal rules do not apply inside football grounds. You will pick up most of your team’s chants as you go along. But as a general rule about what to expect, they usually fall into four groups:
Chants directed at your own side
These will normally (though not always) be supportive. Most teams have a version of the ‘Greatest Team’ chant, which is sung to the tune of ‘The Wild Rover’:
‘And it’s Stockport County, Stockport County FC, We’re by far the greatest team the world has ever seen.’
This is patently absurd. Passionate as the supporters of Stockport County undoubtedly are, not even they would claim (in their more lucid moments) that their team is better than, for instance, the legendary Brazil side that swept all before them in the 1970 World Cup. But an absence of logical reasoning is one of football fans’ most endearing traits.
Chants directed at the opposition
If your team is losing, it is customary to chant at the opposition fans (to the tune of ‘Guantanamera’):
‘Sing when you’re winning,
You only sing when you’re winning,
Sing when you’re win – ning...’
If your team is winning, a common chant is (to the tune of ‘Bread Of Heaven’):
‘Can we play you, can we play you,
Can we play you every week?’
Chants directed at the referee
These will question his eyesight, his parentage, or his propensity for having sex on a regular basis – with himself.
GREAT HISTORICAL CHANTS
As well as joining in with chants during the match, you’re advised to have a few favourite chants from the past ready for when talk in the pub turns to this subject. We recommend the following:
When the Rangers goalkeeper Andy Goram was diagnosed with mild schizophrenia, opposition fans sang: ‘Two Andy Gorams, there’s only two Andy Gorams…’
When Scotland played in Italy, the away fans chanted ‘Deep-fry your pizzas, we’re going to deep-fry your pizzas’.
Manchester United fans used to chant (to the tune of ‘Oops Upside Your Head’) ‘Ooh, aah, Cantona’. When Frenchman Eric Cantona was banned for nine months for assaulting a Crystal Palace fan, the supporters of Leeds United (fierce enemies of the Manchester club, and the club that had sold Cantona to them), sang ‘Où est Cantona?’ Bilingual chanting – you have to doff your beret to that.
Also in the ‘turning-an-existing-chant-on-its-head’ tradition, Brighton and Hove Albion fans started singing about their beloved striker Bobby Zamora (to the tune of ‘That’s Amore’ by Dean Martin): ‘When the ball hits the goal, it’s not Shearer or Cole, it’s Zamora’. When Zamora played for Fulham, on the other hand, and was struggling to score, fans (including the home ones) sang: ‘When the ball hits his head, and it lands in row Z, that’s Zamora.’
SKILLS TO WATCH FOR
The real skills that characterise professional football are not the ones you might expect – ball control, speed, passing accuracy, the ability to turn quickly, etc. Instead they include:
Play-acting Players routinely pretend that they have been fouled in order to win free kicks and get their opponents booked. The standards of acting used to achieve this are at times so excellent that theatrical agents have been known to attend some Premier League matches looking for talent. But more often than not, players’ efforts in the dramatic arts are woefully inadequate, and there are tell-tale signs that give this away, e.g.:
Acrobatics A favourite is the ‘stepladder’, where a player stands behind an opponent, lifting himself up on his shoulders to head the ball first.
Observation The skill of estimating when a ball is at the top of its flight after a long clearance from the goalkeeper. This enables the player to elbow his marker out of the way while attention is diverted.
Beating your opponent The skill that sometimes means getting away from him while retaining control of the ball. Often, however, it has a more literal meaning.