Football Crazy

The wife returned from her business trip to Italy with tales of nights out with a stunningly attractive millionaire, breath-taking scenery and wonderful food. Her adventures certainly made my nights in eating Cheesy Wotsits and watching Bid-up TV seem far less interesting, but with the boy also back from his school trip it was reassuringly pleasant to have the house again filled with the familiar directed-at-me cries of ‘Don’t be so stupid!’ and ‘You’re an idiot!’

On the opposite end of the familiarity scale, however, I was introduced to an entirely new sensation this weekend – and that was wanting Manchester United to win a football match.

In terms of football loyalties I support Leeds United, the boy supports West Ham and the missus comes from a long line of Chelsea fans. So when it comes to watching a match between the Mancs and the Arse you’d probably have to search high and low and then search plenty more to find a less interested household. In fact ‘less interested’ is quite polite as the energy produced solely by my loathing of these two teams could probably power the grid of a small country.

So my only interest in the FA Cup Final this year was the hope that both teams would display their usual ill grace and penchant for violence and leave a Goya-esque scene of severed limbs and stud-imprinted cadavers littering the Millennium Stadium, with uber-thug Roy Keane perched on a crossbar chewing the severed head of Patrick Viera and Arsene Wenger and Alex Ferguson trying to hammer spikes into each other’s heads with croquet mallets.

Sadly this didn’t materialise and the match was 120 minutes of Manchester United trying to score and Arsenal trying to stop them. And the worrying bit was that I wanted the Mancs to score and I even felt a little sorry for them when Arsenal went on to win on penalties.

But then I realised I was feeling sorry for a bunch of over-hyped and over-paid footballers, who in the grand scheme of things are really only a little further up the evolutionary scale than baboons who throw shit at each other.

So I had a good laugh at the gutted and wished injury on the victors and watched several episodes of The Sopranos instead...