PEOPLE WHO LIKE FOOTBALL SHOULD BE PUT IN BOXES AND BULLDOZED INTO THE SEA
Oh, no. The football has started: three weeks of sub-human chanting and celebrations; grown ups saying things like, "I want the French to lose, because I think they’re c***s." (This is called "negative supporting." Everyone talks like this, yet what could be more babyish?)

Fat oafs will shout –indeed, roar themselves hoarse- at televisions and will weep -literally cry for joy- if we win, and weep if we lose. Yet these same oafs are old enough to do jury service: my liberty may one day depend on them. It makes me want to weep; or rather, to vomit with rage.

The players are even worse. All professional sportsmen are more or less imbeciles, of course, but only footballers manage to be so uniquely charmless. They are essentially overgrown spoilt children, diving and rolling around pretending to be injured, and practically wetting themselves whenever someone scores. There is a general, and sometimes quite fantastic, ugliness. If I had my way, I would have them all shot.

I personally believe that most of what is wrong with Britain is traceable to the influence of football.

I was teaching English in Rome a few years ago, when one day the English arrived for a football match. The whole thing degenerated into a war, as usual, and everyone was heartily glad to see the back of them. A couple of days later I happened to be doing a class on character adjectives, and the book had a thing about national stereotypes. "What are the Japanese like?" I asked. They are hard-working. "What are the Germans like?" They are punctual. "What are the English like?"

Did you know that as well as being cold and unemotional, we are also polite, traditional and reserved? I reminded them that a few days previously the English had been in town for a football match, and had been anything but polite and reserved, smashing up bars and vomiting into the fountains. No, no, they said, and gave me that one about the small minority of trouble makers who ruin it for everyone else.

Where does it come from, this idea of small minorities? Have you ever seen a football riot where five or six thugs throw bottles at the police while everyone else stands around tutting disapprovingly? People who like football should be rounded up, put in boxes and bulldozed into the sea. That's the only long term solution.
- posted by Harry Hutton @ 5:47 pm (0) comments