The unwelcome rise of the football hipster
There’s nothing wrong with appreciating the way a football team play but the reactionary nature of this island country is something that pervades in this “hipster culture”. Take last Wednesday’s Champions League match at the Nou Camp as an example. Lionel Messi scoring buckets of goals is something that happens on a weekly basis in La Liga, yet it takes him scoring five on terrestrial television for him to land in the mainstream media. Of course, not everyone has access to Sky to watch their La Liga coverage but anyone with half an inclination to watch Messi play every week knows that where there is a will, and a reliable internet connection, there is a way.
No-one wants to talk about the fact that perhaps three of Messi’s goals against Leverkusen were a result of poor goalkeeping, that he has played many, many better games for the club.
Still, the interminable questions.
Is he the best ever?
Why can’t he do it for Argentina?
Like David Bowie or The Beatles, Messi and Barcelona are undisputedly brilliant. Therefore, the hipsters are still allowed to like them without fear of losing valuable points.
One tweeter who shall remain nameless, qualified his support of Barcelona on Wednesday, as he “supported them before Messi”. Football can live without these qualifications.
Appreciating football teams and supporting them loyally are two separate disciplines, of course. Like everyone else, I appreciate the way in which Napoli spring the trap on their opposition time after time but it’s just one way of playing rather than the way and the same goes for Barcelona’s boa-constrictor possession act.
Surely, if you’re going to support anything, support the game itself without pissing on your territory and without imperialistically planting flags in the centre circle of continental stadiums like a hipster Graeme Souness in a porkpie hat.
You don’t have to read Inverting the Pyramid to be a proper football fan, an appreciation of the game can be on a simplistic level but should never be a case of being seen to be a fan. The joy in football should be the variety, the choices that are available to any given team or individual to interpret moments in matches, to use opposition’s weaknesses against them, to carry a philosophy from the training pitches to the dressing room to the stadium. Teams can rely on physicality to succeed, beauty, craft, a system, organisation, incredible and unique support – there are too many blogs and tweeters who bought the band t-shirt and not the back catalogue.
You can buy a Sonic Youth t-shirt in Topman now.
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