Football Fans

Peter Evans

I feel really sorry for today’s football fans. A real fan never misses a game and develops a fantasy-like, personal relationship with his favourite players and that used to be fairly straightforward with the likes of Stanley Matthews or Bobby Moore. It’s a different ball-game now.

By the time the avid Aston Villa supporter has yelled out, ”Give it to Gabriel Agbonlahor” you can bet your life the ball’s gone somewhere else, and “Great shot, Yakabu”, which can be heard regularly at Newcastle, has a worrying aura of good bacteria and bad bacteria about it.

I suppose one good thing coming out of the change, though, is that there should be a lot less graffiti around. I mean, how can you write rude things on a wall about a player you hate if you can’t spell his name?

Maybe, in the end, they’ll have to go over to numbers but “Get stuck in Red Four!” looses a lot of street cred compared with our old cry of, “Bite ‘ is legs Nobby!?