Backseating the Match

[mmmmsnouts]

What is it about football that people watching it complain and moan and second guess every single thing that happens, in every single second of every single match?

Of course the match threads here feature some heroic bedwetting, but it’s not an Everton thing or even a British thing. I’m watching the Gold Cup and the USA fans are in an absolute uproar. Never mind this is a fairly meaningless tournament and the best, like, 8 players aren’t in the squad. It is a festival of whining:

- Pochettino didn’t pick the right starting XI.
- The players aren’t any good, individually or as a team.
- Pochettino hasn’t made any subs.
- Pochettino hasn’t made enough subs.
- Pochettino made too many subs.
- Pochettino didn’t make the right subs.
- The subs aren’t any good.
- This team is doomed against (a top team they would lose to no matter what).
- Etc.
- Etc.
- Etc.

This doesn’t happen in any other sport, not even close. So like… what’s the deal with that?

 

[BrisbaneToffee]

Well, yes it does happen in other sports. I can tell you it also happens in AFL. There's any number of AFL fans that get a bit frayed around the edges. Especially after a couple of losses. After one loss, the average AFL fan is morose but blasé. After two losses, the family pets start hiding in the cellar, and the missus has a weeks holiday at her mothers (unless it is actually the missus--now there's some fun fireworks!). I suspect NFL may be the same. Cricket fans have known to go into 'lift off' as well. They're not just flannelled fools lounging around in deckchairs discussing the pros and cons of Travis Head/Ben Stokes/Shubman Gill's batting averages.

It's just team sports, and arguably, what makes them so much fun to follow. We're all armchair experts, when the reality is most of us have trouble trying to figure out in the morning which hole in a our undies we have to put our leg through.

It's also much harder to do in individual sports, where the most you can do is call them a [Poor language removed] or a [Poor language removed] for losing

 

[Eggs]

….maybe this thread should be in World Football forum.

US sport has historically been much more analytical and stats based and maybe US culture means ‘watchers’ want to be involved rather than just watching.