Nairobi News

The football season is here again. I know this because I hear the “Manchester United thwacked Arsenal” and “Blackburn Rovers humbled Chelsea” banter in bars, coffee shops and lately in WhatsApp groups.

First, a funny story. In high school, I joined the football club, mainly because the football team landed many trips to boys’ schools like Lenana (Changez) and Nairobi (Patch). I did not last a month in the team. The coach, Mr Paul, pulled me aside and told me in the gentlest manner ever: “Maybe you should try something more creative like the Drama Club?”

I hated football from that day. I have numerous friends who are football fans and fanatics who have tried umpteen times to explain to me the offside rule. But I am afraid that, for me, that ship has already sailed. I simply cannot understand football.

This is why I cannot understand what the hullaballoo is all about during this soccer season. What is it in football that makes grown-ups behave like colicky children when their team loses? What is it about football; a silly game where 22 men kick and run after an inflated piece of pigskin?

Men who adore football, live for football, dream football and love football more than anything else in the world are a waste of life. I am talking about those men who will sulk all week at their wives and girlfriends just because their team lost. Did your wife coach your team? Is she a magician who is supposed to wave a magic wand and make your team win? Did your girlfriend select the players in that team?

I once dated a man who loved football. Well, the relationship did not last two months. On football weekends, I was placed in the back burner and football became his love and life. Important dates were cancelled and Saturday movie nights were put on hold.

He was all about football; glued to his laptop, reading sports news online to keep up with the scores. Tweeting about Manchester United. Insulting his Arsenal friends.

Belittling the Chelsea brothers. Oh, and clapping very hard and screaming like a woman in labour when Manchester United scored a goal.

DISGUSTING MAN-U JERSEY

Did I mention that utterly disgusting Man-U jersey he wore on football weekends? I tolerated all this until I realised that I was dating a child, not a man. So I dumped him shortly after Manchester United lost a really important match. Talk of dark humour.

Football is the only thing that will make a man emotional. It is the only thing that a man will give his one hundred per cent, undivided attention.

Important match dates are the only dates etched in football fanatic’s mind. Your birthday and anniversary can mark themselves in the calendar.

Men who sulk when their teams post dismal results are not real men; they are just tall, emotionally unstable babies who need to be head-butted with a hockey stick.

If your husband or boyfriend spends hours at the bar, watching football and chatting animatedly about some highly paid European footballer, then that is not a man you are dating. That is a teenager with borderline personality disorders who needs deliverance from the Lord.

If your man, my dear girls, screams and claps when the likes of Sanchez, Rooney, Herrera and Giroud step into the field, then that man is a closeted homosexual and you need to rethink your life’s choices. How else can you explain a man shrieking in glee at the sight of another man?

Don’t give me that nonsense that men are ‘genetically wired’ to love football just as women love soap operas and chick-flicks.

Women are not overly emotional when Olivia Pope gets dumped by her presidential boyfriend (Fitz) or when Mary Jane (of the chick-flick Being Mary Jane) discovers that her boyfriend impregnated another woman.

It is just a game. It is just a goal. And it is just a score. It doesn’t matter to us; your wives and girlfriends, so stop heaping upon us the brunt of your team’s misgivings.

We are not in the least interested in football and who scored what. In fact, the few women who love football are really tomboys who never really grew up.

So stop being disagreeable, rude and bad-tempered because your favourite player — who is also your secret crush — has failed the entire team.

Learn to take defeat like a man, for God’s sake.

And finally, to quote Jeremy Clarkson:

“And as for those people who can’t cope if their team loses, give me strength. If you get all teary-eyed just because someone from Latvia, playing in a town you have never been to, for an Arab you have never met, against some Italians you hate for no reason, has missed a penalty, how are you going to manage when you are diagnosed with cancer?”