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Jan. 31st, 2011
The last day of the winter transfer window is the one day I can kick back and relax and gloat over the fact that my clubs are Arsenal and Barcelona. (I mean, if your club is Barcelona you can gloat about them any day, tasteless as that may be, but still.)
(All things considered the football-focused part of my life is just as easy as the rest of it, because my teams are Arsenal and Barcelona. It's easy to love Barcelona, of the fluid tiki-taka drilled into their youth players at their fabled farmhouse and the historically-based mes que un club pretention and the really awful color combination, because they play football like the second coming and because once upon a time they were an institution that people could believe in, and because despite their politics resembling things that go on here at home and their frankly ridiculous monetary issues they managed to make their style and eat the world whole with it, and people might yet keep believing.
Heck, it's even easier to love Arsenal, the football idealist's daydream team, with the youth players poached from everywhere and the brilliance right beside the tendency to trip on their feet and the theoretical refusal to do anything but go at full tilt and the visionary manager who is insane, as visionaries must be, but also stubborn and smart and absolutely sure in his convictions. The rest of the world snaps its fingers and the vision is broken, but it was there. Keeping the daydream is hard, keeping it grounded is harder, but.
I mean, my heart goes out to the fans of, say, Man City, who were Manchester's other team before the cash came in, and then they're still Manchester's other team only now their losing is a moral victory* for football. Even Liverpool could fit that bill, glorious history and absurd amounts of emotional investment and you'll never walk alone, trying to build up something new but still Liverpool.
And I am now beginning to understand how I could learn to love Real Madrid. And dear Fernando Torres, you are annoying me. May people be standing outside your gate either screaming death threats or singing.)
*Don't you hate those words?
---
Postscript: OH MY GULAY, LA LIGA.
(All things considered the football-focused part of my life is just as easy as the rest of it, because my teams are Arsenal and Barcelona. It's easy to love Barcelona, of the fluid tiki-taka drilled into their youth players at their fabled farmhouse and the historically-based mes que un club pretention and the really awful color combination, because they play football like the second coming and because once upon a time they were an institution that people could believe in, and because despite their politics resembling things that go on here at home and their frankly ridiculous monetary issues they managed to make their style and eat the world whole with it, and people might yet keep believing.
Heck, it's even easier to love Arsenal, the football idealist's daydream team, with the youth players poached from everywhere and the brilliance right beside the tendency to trip on their feet and the theoretical refusal to do anything but go at full tilt and the visionary manager who is insane, as visionaries must be, but also stubborn and smart and absolutely sure in his convictions. The rest of the world snaps its fingers and the vision is broken, but it was there. Keeping the daydream is hard, keeping it grounded is harder, but.
I mean, my heart goes out to the fans of, say, Man City, who were Manchester's other team before the cash came in, and then they're still Manchester's other team only now their losing is a moral victory* for football. Even Liverpool could fit that bill, glorious history and absurd amounts of emotional investment and you'll never walk alone, trying to build up something new but still Liverpool.
And I am now beginning to understand how I could learn to love Real Madrid. And dear Fernando Torres, you are annoying me. May people be standing outside your gate either screaming death threats or singing.)
*Don't you hate those words?
---
Postscript: OH MY GULAY, LA LIGA.
The last day of the winter transfer window is the one day I can kick back and relax and gloat over the fact that my clubs are Arsenal and Barcelona. (I mean, if your club is Barcelona you can gloat about them any day, tasteless as that may be, but still.)
(All things considered the football-focused part of my life is just as easy as the rest of it, because my teams are Arsenal and Barcelona. It's easy to love Barcelona, of the fluid tiki-taka drilled into their youth players at their fabled farmhouse and the historically-based mes que un club pretention and the really awful color combination, because they play football like the second coming and because once upon a time they were an institution that people could believe in, and because despite their politics resembling things that go on here at home and their frankly ridiculous monetary issues they managed to make their style and eat the world whole with it, and people might yet keep believing.
Heck, it's even easier to love Arsenal, the football idealist's daydream team, with the youth players poached from everywhere and the brilliance right beside the tendency to trip on their feet and the theoretical refusal to do anything but go at full tilt and the visionary manager who is insane, as visionaries must be, but also stubborn and smart and absolutely sure in his convictions. The rest of the world snaps its fingers and the vision is broken, but it was there. Keeping the daydream is hard, keeping it grounded is harder, but.
I mean, my heart goes out to the fans of, say, Man City, who were Manchester's other team before the cash came in, and then they're still Manchester's other team only now their losing is a moral victory* for football. Even Liverpool could fit that bill, glorious history and absurd amounts of emotional investment and you'll never walk alone, trying to build up something new but still Liverpool.
And I am now beginning to understand how I could learn to love Real Madrid. And dear Fernando Torres, you are annoying me. May people be standing outside your gate either screaming death threats or singing.)
*Don't you hate those words?
---
Postscript: OH MY GULAY, LA LIGA.
(All things considered the football-focused part of my life is just as easy as the rest of it, because my teams are Arsenal and Barcelona. It's easy to love Barcelona, of the fluid tiki-taka drilled into their youth players at their fabled farmhouse and the historically-based mes que un club pretention and the really awful color combination, because they play football like the second coming and because once upon a time they were an institution that people could believe in, and because despite their politics resembling things that go on here at home and their frankly ridiculous monetary issues they managed to make their style and eat the world whole with it, and people might yet keep believing.
Heck, it's even easier to love Arsenal, the football idealist's daydream team, with the youth players poached from everywhere and the brilliance right beside the tendency to trip on their feet and the theoretical refusal to do anything but go at full tilt and the visionary manager who is insane, as visionaries must be, but also stubborn and smart and absolutely sure in his convictions. The rest of the world snaps its fingers and the vision is broken, but it was there. Keeping the daydream is hard, keeping it grounded is harder, but.
I mean, my heart goes out to the fans of, say, Man City, who were Manchester's other team before the cash came in, and then they're still Manchester's other team only now their losing is a moral victory* for football. Even Liverpool could fit that bill, glorious history and absurd amounts of emotional investment and you'll never walk alone, trying to build up something new but still Liverpool.
And I am now beginning to understand how I could learn to love Real Madrid. And dear Fernando Torres, you are annoying me. May people be standing outside your gate either screaming death threats or singing.)
*Don't you hate those words?
---
Postscript: OH MY GULAY, LA LIGA.