You ask a fan of, say, the Cleveland Browns how his team did last weekend, and the answer is pretty simple: "Eh, we lost 35-3. But it was referee aided. Just a little bump in the road. I think we will still make the playoffs." No decoding is required, even if you don't know shit about football. You know that the Browns lost (as is their wont), and their fans are delusional.
Easy. Football is a game of wins and loses, playoffs, and that's about it. True, you need a law degree to decode the rule book and a copy of Das Kapital to figure out all the league's profit sharing and playing field leveling, but for the layman a few minutes with Mike and Mike on a Monday morning will pretty much provide all the information necessary to hold forth at the office.
Ask a soccer fan how his or her favorite EPL team did? "Well, they are out of the Champions League."
"Why," someone asks. "Did they lose?"
"Oh no. They won 3-2, but lost on aggregate 5-4. So they are out."
Your co-workers stare blankly at you. Then you have to explain what the Champions League is and how you get in and how you have to get through to the knock out stages and then how it's single elimination but you play your opponent twice -- once at your stadium, once at theirs -- and whoever scores the most goals over two matches goes onto the next round and how in the event of a tie over the two games whoever has the most away goals wins but if both teams have the same number of away goals they play extra time and if they still can't get a winner they do PKs....
I agree, I agree. It's complicated. That is why it's nice that my boss is a soccer fan too and he knows the language, and I can say "They won the game but are out on aggregate", and that is really all I have to say. If his favorite team, Manchester United, lost points over the weekend, sometimes all I have to do is look at him and he'll give me a look in return that says "I know you know that Clint Dempsey scored the game tying goal at the death, thereby robbing Man U of two points in the race for the league title," to which I will then say out loud "Clint Dempsey is an American hero!". To which my boss will flip me der vogel.
But today? Today, when I found out that Sir Alex Ferguson, manager of Manchester United, was retiring with little public notice at the end of this season after 26 years and 1500 matches at the helm? And when I got to be the first to break the news to my boss, that the man who has been the manager of his favorite team for about half his life, is just going to ride off into the sunset?
I've never seen anything like it. His countenance fell. I've often read that expression in books and even used it in my writing, but I have never actually seen it. One moment he is smiling and happy because I come into his office saying I have big news and he's expecting something awesome, like the Park Lane Tavern is starting to have Topless Tea Thursdays or something like that, and the next? It looked like he had been kicked in the balls and seen a ghost at the same time. I say again -- it looked like a ghost had come up out of nowhere and kicked him in the groonies.
And me? Why, I just laughed at him. I wish I could say I feel bad about it, and that I feel I laughed at him out of nervousness over causing him what looked like real emotional pain. But he is a Manchester United fan and it was pretty funny. So I feel kind of bad about it, but actually no I don't feel bad about it all.
It's a good day to be a Chelsea fan, though it would have been far better if Chelsea had managed to beat Tottenham today. Still, it has seen the end Ferguson Era, and there are rumors afoot that the Special One may be returning to Stamford Bridge from his exile to the Continent, like a little Portugese Napoleon, to lead the Blues once more to Glory.
Go Chelsea! And my best wishes to Sir Alex Ferguson on his retirement. May you have good health and many happy years watching your team lose to Chelsea as Jose Mourinho out foxes your replacement and does so while being much better dressed. Many, many happy years.
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