I could also see how love of the game could become self-sustaining: if you cared about the club, you’d make friends and buy a season ticket and follow every game closely, making you care about the result even more. For people who perhaps didn’t have much money or status at work, and for young men eager to emphasise their masculinity, passionate support for a club could even offer a shortcut to a kind of elevated social status. You might get shouted at by your boss all week and by your wife and kids in the evening, but here, proving your passion in the stadium and in the bar afterwards, you
...more
