Totally agreed
I used to love association football as a yute. Running around a field with my mates, cheering when we scored, feeling deflated when we were getting hammered, feeling proud enough to burst when beating the keeper with a screamer from the edge of the penalty area yet trotting nonchalantly back to the other half of the pitch full of false modesty as it wasn't the done thing to congratulate yourself. Occasionally actually seeing football on the television, complete with fancy graphics that showed the team lineup and a replica of their strip before kick-off. Shoot magazine and Panini sticker albums.

I was gutted when I went to a rugby-playing school but was quickly seduced, although I still held a secret love for "Kevball", however some time in the early 90s I realised that it had somehow morphed into an over-commercialised, over-exposed, over-analysed circus which was everywhere you looked, complete with talking heads with their own peculiar grammar. In my day footballers were popular heroes like Kevin Keegan and Gary Lineker, now they're millionaire rapists and wife-beaters. Beautiful game? Not to me.
(Vice Admiral Sir Charles Cockbrush KCB MBE DSO, who is finding it increasingly difficult to log into b3ta.com wants to duck your aunt and kick your puppy, Wed 1 Sep 2010, 16:48, 1 reply)

that's the problem
it's not a game any more
( Smash Monkey lowering the tone of the whole internet, Wed 1 Sep 2010, 17:34, closed)