It's Football And We Love It

The new season is nearly upon us. Order in our lives will be restored through the sights and sounds of The Beautiful Game. It's a magnificent heady feeling, giddy with excitment and anticipation. And I cannot wait.

'This is my church. This is where I heal my hurt.' When Faithless wrote 'God Is A DJ' obviously they were giving reverance to the dance scene, but the sentiment of this song is easily transferable to football and its hordes of worshippers.

Next Saturday thousands upon thousands of enlightened people will be waking up around the country in a complete and utter state of adrenaline-fuelled excitement. All match day rituals will be observed, lucky pants will be liberated from the back of drawers where they have lay neglected and redundant since May.

Real life, with its bitter disappointments, its soul destroying daily grind, its failed relationships, can go and 'do one'. Football transcends the crushing mundanity of our everyday existence. It's our release from the real world and all its troubles. How can we be expected to worry about the 'credit crunch' and the relentlessly crass thinking of the organisations that govern our lives when we have team formations, lazy-arse strikers and over-the-hill defenders to occupy our thoughts?

Come three o'clock we'll all be inside our cathedrals, our places of worship, wearing our hearts firmly on our sleeves. This is where our dreams are realised or destroyed.

And so it begins. All rationale left at the turnstiles. All senses heightened. The joy, the ecstasy, the exhaltation. The pain, the tears, the hurt. An overwhelming cascade of complex human emotions packed into ninety minutes. A pure, unadulterated experience.

This is what life is about. It's football, and we love it.

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