4 ms·

As an on-the-spectrum brit who was forced to play "footie" at 9:15am in 5degC frosty september mornings by uncaring, unsympathetic, if not abusive, PE "teachers

As an on-the-spectrum brit who was forced to play "footie" at 9:15am in 5degC frosty september mornings by uncaring, unsympathetic, if not abusive, PE "teachers" at my comprehensive secondary from age 11 to age 16, and previously bullied in primary-school to the point where I tried to hang myself in the toilets with my school uniform tie at 8 because I didn't support any football team and didn't collect those stupid football stickers - stuff like this makes me just feel despondent at the utter lack of any redeeming values in association football. Burn it to the ground.

m4tthumphrey 5y ago
Unfortunately, as a life long fan of football in the UK, this rings true from the opposite side, and I'm sorry you had to go through that. However, the sport itself has nothing todo with the bigger picture here. It just so happens that it's the biggest sport in the world, hence worth so much money to $REGIME who will do anything they can to capitalise.
- lnxg33k1 5y ago
  I also haven't fully understood the point he's making, like "A shitty person just made me suffer to play a sport, fuck the sport", like wtf
  - DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
    Association football, itself, in isolation, is a fine game. There's nothing inherently bad about it. If actual friends of mine want a kick-around then sure, I'm game. But it's the culture around the sport in the UK, and greater Europe, that's awful. Remember hooligan "firms" in the 1990s? Those things don't happen in a vacuum. Chiefly, the football culture in the UK is inextricably tied to the entrenched class system, in the worst ways, unfortunately - and I haven't seen the Premier League's televised pundits ever advise their fans to maybe, perhaps, actually be good ambassadors for the sport to the rest of us. (Okay, Michael Owen is an exception - my perception is the rest are like Eric Cantona: officially reprimanded, but we can tell people are lapping up his then abhorrent personal conduct. The same way people support Trump, I suppose). FIFA aren't running a tight-ship from the top. The tiers under them aren't coming close, and the conceptual levels below are only worse.
    - lnxg33k1 5y ago
      I have issues agreeing with you, I am more willing to think that certain issues are more about the system segregating classes, not educating or giving chances, than violence exists because of football, then of course football is more accessible as you can play it with a paper ball, and has bigger numbers? I would say that violence would still come out as it's there and (used to come?) comes out with football, what should we do? Only follow sports that require better social status and more expensive tools? Or like yeah there are some example of players that were violent and crazy, as you can find in any place with a number of humans doing it, I'd say HSBC was laudering cartels money and funding terrorist, all bankers are criminals?
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    - semi-extrinsic 5y ago
      > Association football, itself, in isolation, is a fine game. There's nothing inherently bad about it. Actually one can argue that the rules in football haven't kept up with the evolution of humans. When they defined the size of a goal, the average adult male was a full 10 cm shorter than they are today. People are running faster and jumping higher. The sport would be a lot more exciting if you increased the physical dimensions of goals and pitches, so you would have 10 goals in an average game instead of 0 to 3.
      - dncornholio 5y ago
        Average goals per game has been 2.6 - 2.7 since 1962. Highest was 1954 with 5.38. 10 goals has never been an average, to reach that, the goals should be twice the size at least. I don't thing the size of the goal or people getting taller / faster is the reason we don't see many scoring. A big problem for me is the amount of downtime and the amount of foulplaying. Schwalbes are a real skill. Players fall to the ground way too quickly. Smaller field would make things more interesting.
      - the_af 5y ago
        > The sport would be a lot more exciting if you [suggested changes] Do note soccer is currently tremendously exciting for millions of fans worldwide. I understand you mean well, and everyone is free to suggest changes (some of them good), but the sport right now is very exciting for huge numbers of people. Informally it's a tremendously easy and fun game to pick up. Any kid with a foot ball and some room can play with their friends. It's even how some players start. I don't think excitement is the biggest issue with football. The biggest issues are probably corruption in the business organizations around it, violence due to hooligans, etc.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - reedf1 5y ago
    Empathy not your strong point?
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - Quarrelsome 5y ago
    their point is made for themselves. Learn to recognize cathartic human expressions, it helped them that they wrote it out and looked at it.
- brnt 5y ago
  > However, the sport itself has nothing todo with the bigger picture here. I have a book that convincingly makes the case that physical exercise, sports, is a favorite tool of the fascist. To my knowledge, it's never translated from Dutch, but I think there must be research on this in English as well.
swarnie 5y ago
On the flipside of this i think i learnt a lot about myself on the rugby pitch around this age. There is a lot to take away from it, simple things like organisation and schedule keeping to team building, sportsmanship and determination. Cold winter morning / evenings on the pitch or at the lake made me a better person im sure.
- DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
  > Football is a gentleman's game played by ruffians, and rugby is a ruffian's game played by gentlemen.
- arethuza 5y ago
  I know it's a terrible cliche but the old joke that "Football is a gentleman’s game played by hooligans, and Rugby is a hooligans’ game played by gentlemen" isn't entirely inaccurate. I had to play football at the extremely low ranking state school I went to and found the whole experience utterly miserable. My son attended a public school and played rugby there and I enjoyed watching him play and he seemed to get a lot out of it, while the on the pitch experience was far rougher than football the culture around the game seemed far more civilised. Of course that could just be the context of the different type of school but I thought it went deeper than that. Edit: A nice touch at our school PE department was that they were mostly ex Paras and they seemed to treat us more like recruits than schoolkids. There was one ex Royal Marine who while working us just as hard was at least good natured about it, whereas the others seemed to be in a state of continual anger.
  - eru 5y ago
    For non-British readers: a public school in Britain might not be what you expect it to be. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_school_(United_Kingdom) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_school_(United_Kingdom)
  - the_af 5y ago
    > "Football is a gentleman’s game played by hooligans, and Rugby is a hooligans’ game played by gentlemen" In Argentina at least, football is linked to the people, low and upper class; it's a "popular" sport. In contrast, Rugby is linked to the elite; mostly well to do spoiled kids (in the public perception, at least). There were a couple of beatings/murders linked to spoiled rich kids who were Rugby players, enough that in our public perception today a Rugby player is definitely not considered a "gentleman" but a rich brat potentially prone to violence.
AussieWog93 5y ago
Jesus Christ. That is not a healthy outlook on things.
- DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
  With apologies for the hyperbole. Theres nothing wrong with the sport, I want to stress that. What I want to see gone is the corrupt FIFA as its officiating body, and I want to see the background culture of the football scene, where empathy is “gay” and where any complaint, regardless of legitimacy, is dismissed as “whinging”, turned on its head.
  - AussieWog93 5y ago
    Nah man, all good. No need to explain yourself. It was just a bit sad to read, as it sounds exactly like something my grandfather would say. He's in his mid-to-late 70s now and still eaten up by things that happened in his childhood and early 20s (things that plenty of other people go through and don't allow to destroy their entire life). His inability to deal with it in a healthy way has made the last 5 decades of his life miserable, and it kills me to see another person go through this as well. I understand this is not a simple task for the average Aspie, but please try to understand what happened and integrate it into your outlook in a way that allows you to function as a healthy adult.
pokepim 5y ago
Oh good, I’m sorry to hear that. I was also bullied mostly because I was fat in primary school so i sucked at playing sports. But I still liked to watch football and play fifa afterwards, like i think in secondary school it all changed and I became a fan
andrepd 5y ago
I'm sorry you had that experience. The school system failed you by not helping you as a victim of bullying. That being said football is a source of joy, entertainment, and camaraderie to hundreds of millions of people around the planet. There's really no "lack of any redeeming values in football". You should perhaps come to a grassroots football match, away from the multi-billion dollar dirty business the sport at a highest level has become, to see that.
eru 5y ago
Ahem, it sounds like your problem is not with some people enjoying a sport, but with being bullied and forced to do what you don't like? (I don't like football either; neither watching nor playing, but I don't mind if other people engage in it.)

m4tthumphrey 5y ago

Unfortunately, as a life long fan of football in the UK, this rings true from the opposite side, and I'm sorry you had to go through that. However, the sport itself has nothing todo with the bigger picture here. It just so happens that it's the biggest sport in the world, hence worth so much money to $REGIME who will do anything they can to capitalise.

lnxg33k1 5y ago
I also haven't fully understood the point he's making, like "A shitty person just made me suffer to play a sport, fuck the sport", like wtf
- DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
  Association football, itself, in isolation, is a fine game. There's nothing inherently bad about it. If actual friends of mine want a kick-around then sure, I'm game. But it's the culture around the sport in the UK, and greater Europe, that's awful. Remember hooligan "firms" in the 1990s? Those things don't happen in a vacuum. Chiefly, the football culture in the UK is inextricably tied to the entrenched class system, in the worst ways, unfortunately - and I haven't seen the Premier League's televised pundits ever advise their fans to maybe, perhaps, actually be good ambassadors for the sport to the rest of us. (Okay, Michael Owen is an exception - my perception is the rest are like Eric Cantona: officially reprimanded, but we can tell people are lapping up his then abhorrent personal conduct. The same way people support Trump, I suppose). FIFA aren't running a tight-ship from the top. The tiers under them aren't coming close, and the conceptual levels below are only worse.
  - lnxg33k1 5y ago
    I have issues agreeing with you, I am more willing to think that certain issues are more about the system segregating classes, not educating or giving chances, than violence exists because of football, then of course football is more accessible as you can play it with a paper ball, and has bigger numbers? I would say that violence would still come out as it's there and (used to come?) comes out with football, what should we do? Only follow sports that require better social status and more expensive tools? Or like yeah there are some example of players that were violent and crazy, as you can find in any place with a number of humans doing it, I'd say HSBC was laudering cartels money and funding terrorist, all bankers are criminals?
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - semi-extrinsic 5y ago
    > Association football, itself, in isolation, is a fine game. There's nothing inherently bad about it. Actually one can argue that the rules in football haven't kept up with the evolution of humans. When they defined the size of a goal, the average adult male was a full 10 cm shorter than they are today. People are running faster and jumping higher. The sport would be a lot more exciting if you increased the physical dimensions of goals and pitches, so you would have 10 goals in an average game instead of 0 to 3.
    - dncornholio 5y ago
      Average goals per game has been 2.6 - 2.7 since 1962. Highest was 1954 with 5.38. 10 goals has never been an average, to reach that, the goals should be twice the size at least. I don't thing the size of the goal or people getting taller / faster is the reason we don't see many scoring. A big problem for me is the amount of downtime and the amount of foulplaying. Schwalbes are a real skill. Players fall to the ground way too quickly. Smaller field would make things more interesting.
    - the_af 5y ago
      > The sport would be a lot more exciting if you [suggested changes] Do note soccer is currently tremendously exciting for millions of fans worldwide. I understand you mean well, and everyone is free to suggest changes (some of them good), but the sport right now is very exciting for huge numbers of people. Informally it's a tremendously easy and fun game to pick up. Any kid with a foot ball and some room can play with their friends. It's even how some players start. I don't think excitement is the biggest issue with football. The biggest issues are probably corruption in the business organizations around it, violence due to hooligans, etc.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- reedf1 5y ago
  Empathy not your strong point?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- Quarrelsome 5y ago
  their point is made for themselves. Learn to recognize cathartic human expressions, it helped them that they wrote it out and looked at it.
brnt 5y ago
> However, the sport itself has nothing todo with the bigger picture here. I have a book that convincingly makes the case that physical exercise, sports, is a favorite tool of the fascist. To my knowledge, it's never translated from Dutch, but I think there must be research on this in English as well.

swarnie 5y ago

On the flipside of this i think i learnt a lot about myself on the rugby pitch around this age. There is a lot to take away from it, simple things like organisation and schedule keeping to team building, sportsmanship and determination. Cold winter morning / evenings on the pitch or at the lake made me a better person im sure.

DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
> Football is a gentleman's game played by ruffians, and rugby is a ruffian's game played by gentlemen.
arethuza 5y ago
I know it's a terrible cliche but the old joke that "Football is a gentleman’s game played by hooligans, and Rugby is a hooligans’ game played by gentlemen" isn't entirely inaccurate. I had to play football at the extremely low ranking state school I went to and found the whole experience utterly miserable. My son attended a public school and played rugby there and I enjoyed watching him play and he seemed to get a lot out of it, while the on the pitch experience was far rougher than football the culture around the game seemed far more civilised. Of course that could just be the context of the different type of school but I thought it went deeper than that. Edit: A nice touch at our school PE department was that they were mostly ex Paras and they seemed to treat us more like recruits than schoolkids. There was one ex Royal Marine who while working us just as hard was at least good natured about it, whereas the others seemed to be in a state of continual anger.
- eru 5y ago
  For non-British readers: a public school in Britain might not be what you expect it to be. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_school_(United_Kingdom) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_school_(United_Kingdom)
- the_af 5y ago
  > "Football is a gentleman’s game played by hooligans, and Rugby is a hooligans’ game played by gentlemen" In Argentina at least, football is linked to the people, low and upper class; it's a "popular" sport. In contrast, Rugby is linked to the elite; mostly well to do spoiled kids (in the public perception, at least). There were a couple of beatings/murders linked to spoiled rich kids who were Rugby players, enough that in our public perception today a Rugby player is definitely not considered a "gentleman" but a rich brat potentially prone to violence.

AussieWog93 5y ago

Jesus Christ. That is not a healthy outlook on things.

DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
With apologies for the hyperbole. Theres nothing wrong with the sport, I want to stress that. What I want to see gone is the corrupt FIFA as its officiating body, and I want to see the background culture of the football scene, where empathy is “gay” and where any complaint, regardless of legitimacy, is dismissed as “whinging”, turned on its head.
- AussieWog93 5y ago
  Nah man, all good. No need to explain yourself. It was just a bit sad to read, as it sounds exactly like something my grandfather would say. He's in his mid-to-late 70s now and still eaten up by things that happened in his childhood and early 20s (things that plenty of other people go through and don't allow to destroy their entire life). His inability to deal with it in a healthy way has made the last 5 decades of his life miserable, and it kills me to see another person go through this as well. I understand this is not a simple task for the average Aspie, but please try to understand what happened and integrate it into your outlook in a way that allows you to function as a healthy adult.

pokepim 5y ago

Oh good, I’m sorry to hear that. I was also bullied mostly because I was fat in primary school so i sucked at playing sports. But I still liked to watch football and play fifa afterwards, like i think in secondary school it all changed and I became a fan

andrepd 5y ago

I'm sorry you had that experience. The school system failed you by not helping you as a victim of bullying. That being said football is a source of joy, entertainment, and camaraderie to hundreds of millions of people around the planet. There's really no "lack of any redeeming values in football". You should perhaps come to a grassroots football match, away from the multi-billion dollar dirty business the sport at a highest level has become, to see that.

eru 5y ago

Ahem, it sounds like your problem is not with some people enjoying a sport, but with being bullied and forced to do what you don't like? (I don't like football either; neither watching nor playing, but I don't mind if other people engage in it.)