I turned on the TV the other night and found what I thought was a good idea. Most TV is absolute rubbish, especially at the moment, so I was pleasantly surprised. One of the nostalgia channels had decided to re-air a soccer tournament from 20-odd years ago.
I know, I know…we can look up the result, but I didn’t mind one bit watching the game again. It is good because so much of televised soccer these days involves gambling, but in this case, everything is already known.
I don’t really watch it. It’s on in the background. I look up when the commentator gets excited about something. Most sport, especially my beloved cycling, I lost interest in after the stroke, but soccer is another thing, if my interest hasn’t exactly been rekindled, it is at least tolerable.
As a youngster up in Liverpool, I loved my soccer. Most every boy did. In fact I find it surprising, as someone who left thirty years ago, just how much it still means to people up there.
The whole of my family supported Liverpool. They were a second-rate team until the Sixties. Since then they have become a powerhouse and have even won Europe’s premier trophy, the Champions’ League, several times. My grandad had once even played for them, but way back in the Thirties. So with the family all supporting them, it was inevitable that I decided to support Liverpool’s other team, Everton. In fact, Everton were not a bad team themselves, also winning a European trophy when I watched them.
My first game, I went with my dad, a treat for my eleventh birthday, Christmas 1978. It was against Tottenham Hotspur (Spurs) and ended 1-1. I could not believe I was seeing my heroes from TV live, in the flesh! Even better was to come, as I talked my dad into taking me to see the current champions, Nottingham Forest, a few months later.
As I got old enough to go to the game on my own, I continued going to occasional games. I started earning – only a paper round – and got myselt a season ticket (a block ticket which admitted me to every game). It was a period of frustration – the manager was putting a decent roster together but they weren’t quite there yet. By the mid-Eighties, they were a decent team and started winning trophies.
1986 was the year I left Liverpool. Even soccer was not going to keep me there, although it was always a good excuse to revisit. The following year, 1987, Everton won the league again and actually I went to quite a few games, considering that I now lived 200 miles away.
By the Nineties, career took over, Everton were not so good any more (narrowly avoiding relegation one year), and my visits to see the soccer were less frequent. By the Noughties, however, they again had a young, hungry manager and had built a decent team. By this time I was taking my daughter – I don’t think she gave a hoot about soccer but she loved being among 40,000 other people. My parents were still up there, so it was a good opportunity to visit grandparents, too.
My parents both died in 2012. One of the knock-on effects was that I had to go up there regularly to begin clearing out the house. Prolonged time up there gave me the opportunity to watch soccer regularly again. I noticed a change – where I had once watched a sport, I was now watching a business. Although I enjoyed watching the games, I was never as passionate about the result.
I sold my parents’ house at the start of 2014. Occasionally, Everton have played on the south coast, and I watched them a few times on their travels, but I have never been up to see them since. The sport has become so mercenary, I’m not even sure I’d bother watching them on tv these days.
Mister Bump 
I remember Everton were a great team in the 80s, so much so that they were the defacto team of everyone in my primary school – even though we were in South Wales and miles from Liverpool. One boy supported Liverpool and was harangued by all the other boys, but he stuck with them and everyone else switched to Man-U when were win secondary school. I always supported Spurs. No idea why – I think they were my dad’s team and he did grow up near enough to London for it to make sense, but he was hardly the most passionate of fans. Switched to Cardiff City when I was old enough to realise that they were actually my local team and although that was just a series of disappointments and false hope it did mean I could go to the home games. These days I’ll watch it if it’s on but I agree that it’s hard to get too invested anymore.
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Funnily enough when I left Liverpool I started off in Cardiff. I remember watching Tranmere (who are based in Birkenhead) in Newport, Cardiff and Swansea. I watched Wales at the Vetch too, saw Stoichkov score against them – he was a megastar at the time.
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Stoichkov was a great player! We used to go and watch Wales mostly to see the stars on the opposing team! Although we had Giggs in the nineties but he didn’t always show up…
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Yeah wingers were like that – could turn the game but mostly anonymous
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Don’t know if it means anything but Leon Osman and I were at school together. We hung around in the same group of friends. He was a very nice lad. He played for Everton and England Juniors while we were at school.
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I used to like him, him and Tony Hibbert, it was good to see local lads making it to the top. I heard Osman came from Upholland, which is where my auntie lives even now. I once cycled from my mum’s in Liverpool over there, via Billinge Hill, to meet for a cup of tea.
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The school we went to was in UpHolland.
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small world. My auntie moved out there when she got married sometime in the Seventies, my cousin too (I guess she’s about 40 now.) After I sold the house, they were my only link left with the area.
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Childhood rebellion, your family supports Liverpool, so you support Everton. I used to take my son to hockey games in Toronto (The Toronto Maple Leafs) and he would wear a Detroit Red Wings hat and a Chicago Black Hawks shirt. Used to drive me crazy. I remember kicking tose old leather footballs about in games, they weighed a ton in the rain and heading the ball gave me a headache. Surprised there weren’t more concussions.
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There’s quite a lot of debate about that these days here, even with the modern balls. But at grass roots level – the professional game is unaffected. But these being the times, it is usually somebody older looking for some kind of reason why they got some kind of brain injury, and seeking compensation. Never seems to get anywhere but seems very plausible, I’d be nervous about my child heading a ball.
Yes my support for the other team was, looking back, the start of a rebellious streak I’ve had all my life.
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I know nothing about soccer, or as you say “football,” but I know how it feels to watch a game that happened years ago. People have loaded lots of baseball games to YouTube, and they’re just as enjoyable to watch now as they were 40 years ago.
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I thought I change all references to “football”, but neve mind. That indeed is what we say here, very seldum talk about soccer. But I love how I can be doing something on the computer and just glance up every now and again. Especially if I look at a web page, I often get the computer to just read it to me, so I don’t want the sound of the tv to interfere with that.
Funnily enough they started the Premier League back this weekend. Empty stadia but the tv co are adding canned crowd noises to the commentary. Very lame.
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