@kytta

How I've grown to like football

Here’s a sentence I’d never thought I’d be saying at any point in my life:

Yeah, I’ve watched the Germany game with friends, and then we went to the bar. It had no TV, though, so I’ve watched the France vs. Portugal game on my phone.

When I was young, I didn’t like football. In fact, I didn’t really like any sport, but football especially. Growing up, it was the most popular team sport across my peeps. It was unavoidable: Kids of my age would play it in PE and in their free time. And I used to hate it a lot.

Football as a child

I was never really interested in football, so never bothered to learn the rules. I was also not good at running and kicking, so my classmates never picked me for their teams. That was a win-win situation at the time — I didn’t have to play, and they didn’t have to endure my awful skills — but it still left a mark on me. I was alone; I simply used to go home when others proposed to play football.

The same goes for watching the matches. I found the whole act rather boring: the field is too big, so the players spend most of the time running around, and since Russia was never really that good, it rarely came to goal celebrations. I’ve ignored most games, unless it was running in the background. And as a teenager, I was quite snide about it, too.

World Cup at home

My behaviour has started to change in 2018, when Russia hosted the World Cup, and my city was one of the hosts. The city changed a lot during this time: new streets, parks, and decorations were put in place, and more and more signs appeared with English text on them — a novelty! And then, when thousands of foreigners poured in, I started to like it even more. There were so many people from all over the world, and many conversations were and could have been had — I still kinda regret not being a volunteer that year. This is when I started to follow the championship, albeit lightly: I watched all Russian games, until they were knocked out, and I was mourning the devastating GER—KOR game. This was the first time I’ve felt the football uniting people.

Of course, the world is nothing like back in 2018. COVID, war, and the controversial Qatar World Cup took the joy of football away. There were not many football fans among my newly made German friends either. And it was less than a month before the kick-off when I learned that Euro 2024 would take place in Germany. I checked the list of venues, thanked God for no games being played near me, and continued to ignore it.

Kick off

On the day of the first Euro 2024 game, I was in Berlin with a couple of friends of mine. We’ve had a long day behind us, and we wanted to go to a Belgian bar (can recommend) for a dubbel or two. On our way from the tram station, I observed the Germans watching the game. Almost everyone living in the ground floor had their TV standing on the windowsill, with five to ten tenants sitting outside on a tiny bench, watching the ball being kicked around. This was a peculiar sight; something I’ve never seen in Russia or after having had moved to Germany. There was something incredibly human, communal about this, and I loved to just see it.

The bar was packed with people, and all of them were watching the game, too. It was relatively late in the game when we walked in, and Germany was already leading 3-0. I was irritated about there being too many people, but I guess the beer let me rethink this. With every minute, I looked more and more often at the screen. 4-0 was met with a euphoria. 4-1 caused some head shakes, and 5-1 was the final nail in the coffin of both the Scottish team and my disinterest in football. From that point on, I was looking forward to the games.

Not just about home?

I didn’t expect to start liking football, and even less did I expect to also be interested in teams other than Germany. After Germany lost in that game yesterday (I’m blaming the referee, y’all), it could be over, but it somehow wasn’t. Two hours later, I was sitting with a group of friends at a bar table. One eye followed the Doppelkopf game, the other followed the penalty shoot-out between France and Portugal. And even this post was written by me with ENG—SUI running on the second monitor. And I really am starting to get a hang of this; or at least, I’m beginning to understand why others like it so much.

But alas, I don’t think it’s a universal thing; I don’t think I’m an ultimate football fan now. There is still a lot to criticize about the sports, and I won’t go over every controversial aspect of it. And I still heavily dislike the regional football for being too polarizing among the fans. And, of course, I would never even think of watching the games, hadn’t it been for the fact that they take place in the country I live in. But hey, it is fun while it lasts, and I’m all there for it.


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