ENGLAND play in the Euro 2024 final shortly, but 60-year-old fan Normal Steele explains that it is not real football compared to when he was a boy:
Footballers’ names
Footballers used to have normal, old fashioned names, such as Nobby, Bobby and Ron. Now the England team is full of names I don’t understand, like Ezri, Ivan and Jarrod. And don’t even get me started on Robbie.
Too many foreign countries
You used to know where you stood. Half the world map was pink, and the rest was the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia. Now you can’t even remember which country your new striker is from. Why does there need to be a Slovenia and a Slovakia, anyway? It’s confusing.
Colours not found in nature
Everything’s gone fluorescent yellow: boots, referees’ shirts, police jackets. What’s wrong with good old black? I expect it’s because the woke lefties who’ve infiltrated everything will get upset by it.
Smooth pitches
Back in the day, a player would round the keeper, tap the ball towards the empty net and turn away to celebrate. But the ball would stop on the goal line because rain had turned that little patch of mud into Lake Windermere. That’s real football.
Social media
Your club signs a promising young player, but then some snowflake gets offended by a tweet from five years ago that suggested the Nazis had a strong work ethic. You’re kicked out of the cup, and your manager’s forced to humiliatingly take the knee at a press conference. The game’s gone.
Sponsors
Years ago, the pitch was surrounded by hoardings advertising local tile merchants, haulage firms and breweries. These days it’s those electronic ones flashing something distracting in Chinese, Thai or Russian. I don’t know which, they all look the bloody same.
Footballers look too young
Footballers used to look like grown men, thanks to moustaches, chain smoking and spending the off-season working as a mercenary in Zimbabwe. Or because they were Scottish. Now they get their hair cut every day, eat salad and exfoliate, so they all look about 14.
