a good book has no ending

passive-aggressiveness ahoy!

generally I hate when people proclaim to be a ~better supporter than someone else or whatever—God knows I love talking to other people about soccer, no matter how much they know about the game—and of course I don’t know everything. But you are a bandwagoning Chelsea/Real Madrid supporter who likes to brag about how much you know about everything ever, especially soccer. You tweet me incessantly about Liverpool and our boring/stupid/poor players/matches/staff/transfer policy (admittedly, those adjectives are accurate a lot of the time,which I know. I don’t need you pointing out every stupid thing my club does. Your club, if you haven’t noticed, is captained by John Terry, stupidity in human form.). You just tried to tell me that the women’s game in general is not as good or compelling as the men’s game. You met Ronaldo once at a hotel in LA, big deal. Will you shut the fuck up already? You told me at the beginning of this season that you didn’t have an EPL team, professed an interest around the time Barcelona went out of the CL to Chelsea, and suddenly you’ve been a blue since birth. You’re still lording the CL title over me.

just…I mean, I got up at 5 a.m. three times in a week last summer to watch my club play a meaningless friendly against a Malaysian side. I know people who watch every single reserves and senior match throughout the season. We all read that fucking 100+ page report on the Suarez-Evra debacle last season and had a serious debate on racism in the modern game (while I’m not sure you’ve even heard the whole story on the Terry-Anton Ferdinand incident). There are people brilliant at analyzing tactical shifts so tiny that I miss them altogether. There are fantastic blogs devoted to the women’s game. I’m not saying you have to be SuperFan or soccer-obsessed or watch every single minute your team plays, because it is beyond okay to be a casual fan or even not to watch at all, and simply root for your club when you can, but if you’re going to bandwagon and act like the most dedicated fan in the history of ever and pester me about my own club all the time to boot, put in the effort, you know? Watch the games against teams in the relegation zone. Learn about club history. Pay attention to the news. Be a supporter even when it’s not convenient. It makes success that much sweeter.

(I’m being That Fan, aren’t I? The high-and-mighty kind that judges you for how long you’ve been a supporter (when, hypocritically, I have supported LFC for a much shorter time than most other Reds I know) and for your level of obsession with the game. Sorry. But I can’t stand bandwagoners, and even less so bandwagoners who are so aggressive about their support for their team.)