Football fans wouldn't tolerate it if you wandered into their office to call them useless, overpaid bastards, but they're all too eager to return the favour, even when it directly diminishes the performance of their own team. words by Iain Macintosh
English football supporters have never been the most intelligent of observers, but this October's clash with Estonia saw our bone-headed following plumb new depths of idiocy with their completely unnecessary barracking of Frank Lampard.
Fans are always quick to point out how much money it costs them to watch football, but when they splurge £50 on a ticket and then spend the day booing their own players, it's a little difficult to sympathise.
Lampard would be the first to admit that he's not exactly Mr Popular with the more under-evolved members of our support base, but that's beside the point. Targeting individual players for abuse does not make them play better. And if they don't play better, England don't win. If England don't win, we all have to pretend to be Scottish next summer and no-one wants that, do they?
If, every time I opened my laptop, a chorus of heads appeared at my window chanting, "Iain Macintosh is a wanker, is a wanker," not only would it bring back harrowing memories of secondary school, but, more importantly, it would throw my concentration completely. I might rush the pivotal final sentence just so I could draw the curtains and hide under the bed.
