The Twelve Months Of Football My True Love Sent Me To

It’s that time of year where if you don’t write an article that’s got some connotation to Christmas then you might as well not bother. You’ll be glad to know I’m swerving past Christmas gifts, jumpers, advent calendars and Santa gags and using a good old-fashioned Christmas Carol instead (not Andy Carroll – although he’s only useful about once a year as well – OK, one joke).

There is plenty of current news to talk about instead. Like Arsenal losing their 22-game unbeaten record, Tottenham’s and Liverpool’s unlikely scraping through in the UCL or of course – breaking just before I put fingers to keyboard – Jose Mourinho’s sacking at Manchester United.

But no, Christmas it has to be; otherwise it’ll look different and slightly awkward alongside all the other articles this week. But where next, once that’s decided?

Well, a quick totting up on my fingers and toes made me realise that I’ve seen a hell of a lot of football this year (even more if you count American football and the three London games). Without even applying it to a spreadsheet and adding formulas, my mental arithmetic tells me I’ve been to twenty-eight EFL games – including a few non-work ones to support my club, Walsall – and fourteen Danish Superliga contests in 2018. Plus (and it really helps if you reel these off ’12 Days of Christmas’ style)…

FIVE WOMEN’S SUPER LEAGUE

Four Dutch Eredivisie

Three United Counties

Two North-West Counties

One National League and a partridge in a pear tree.

So, here’s the highlights of what I’ve seen, enjoyed, learned and brought home with me in the last twelve months and more than fifty live matches.

January

My footballing year started on a bitterly cold Sunday afternoon in Birmingham. The game in question wasn’t at Villa Park or St. Andrews but at the home of Solihull Moors and the ground they share with Birmingham City Women. At the time, the Blues were struggling for form near the foot of the FAWSL as the league itself was getting to grips with its move from a summer to a winter league. I’m pleased to say both are now flourishing; Birmingham Women are just five points off the summit after a great start this season and the league as its rebrand, new entrants and exciting battles at the top of the Super League and Championship have been rewarded by higher attendances and greater media exposure. It’s not just at club level that the women’s game has kicked on either; as Phil Neville’s appointment as the Lionesses manager has raised the profile ahead of a World Cup in 2019 where his highly-rated team will play Scotland in their first game and hope to go two better than Canada 2015.

February

With a mid-season-break finally getting the green light in England, last year was a timely reminder of those harsh winters of yesteryear. Several games bit the dust due to some of the heaviest snowfall for many years and EFL fixtures were decimated in parts of February and March. Two games stand out for me. On one weekend, every single one of the games involving our assessors was postponed, except the one I was going to. Driving to it, I went past snow drifts twice the height of the car and the club in question had done a grand job getting the game on by clearing tonnes of the white stuff to the pitchside so I could sit in a tiny seat with no leg room and temperatures that never went above minus numbers. Proof that football fans will endure anything to watch a game. The other was a match at Port Vale in which a heavy blizzard rendered anything remotely white (the lines, ball and Port Vale’s kit) invisible and meant that although I was there, I had to refer to the media afterwards to discover that the home side scored two late goals to salvage a draw.

March

One of the advantages/disadvantages (delete as applicable) of working in football is that I rarely have time to watch my own team. But my club gave fans a very late Christmas present in 2018 by bringing in ex-player and favourite local son, Dean Keates, from Wrexham to take over from beleaguered boss, Jon Whitney. With the team very much in a relegation battle, Keates had little time to make his mark but he did manage to mould the defence into something that made us a little harder to beat than we had been and get us ‘over the line’ with a game to spare.

April

If the winter was bad, the spring and summer was to prove sunnily unforgettable. It was also the time of my introduction to something I was to become very familiar with – the Danish sausage. If you think once you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all, think again. There are Danish sausages and there are Danish sausages and I peaked early as my first one was the famous Lyngby Sausage; a monstrous-sized feast that the club have become rightly famous for. I’m afraid to say I wimped out, having to share as it was more than my appetite could cope with. But it was good preparation because I was to discover that if you want food at a Danish football match, then you’d better have a real preference for sausage.

May

My match of the year. The Dane’s Superliga play-off between AC Horsens and Brondby was to prove more unforgettable than the Lyngby Sausage. Brondby (and their 5,000 traveling fans) arrived knowing a win would all but clinch the title. An early-evening march through Horsens streets, fireworks and two goals before half-time later, they were seemingly home and hosed, especially as the home team hadn’t had a decent shot in 89 minutes. But a last gasp free-kick gave them a lifeline and with virtually the last kick of the game, they equalised. Cue mayhem, hundreds of [plastic and half full] beer glasses showering onto the pitch as well as what looked like a mobile phone, the Brondby players falling to their knees and an altogether less-well-behaved march by their fans back into town. As a spectacle it was unrivalled, and some of it, like fresh cream cakes, it was a bit naughty but absolutely bloody awesome too.

June

A month or two off after so much football? Not likely; it was the World Cup innit? But the build-up didn’t give it much hope. Tales of street violence, unwelcoming locals and over-priced hotels and flights made it sound as bad as the host nation’s FIFA ranking but neither turned out to be accurate. The country opened its arms to the world and gave us one of the best tournaments in living memory. The hosts team won 5-0 in the opening game and pretty much set the tone from there on in.

July

Gareth Southgate wanted a new England. Not a team full of fear of World Cups Past and scared to express themselves but a young, energetic and exciting one that was as open with the fans as it was down the left side. They gave us cause for genuine optimism as we brushed Tunisia and Panama aside and then – and this isn’t a typo – won on penalties against Colombia before literally cruising past Sweden (the first England knock-out game since 2002 where you could relax). OK, so the fairy tale ended when we met a decent team in Croatia and Ballon d’Or winner-in-waiting, Luca Modric, but it was good while it lasted.

August

Speaking of which, Walsall opened the new season with a spring in their step and a new forward line mined from the non-league side of the game. Wins over Plymouth, Tranmere, Gillingham, Wimbledon and Rochdale in August convinced us it this could be our year and convinced me to go to a match to see what all the hype was about. I chose the home game versus Macclesfield in the EFL Cup. We lost on penalties. F****rs.

September

My first ‘work’ match of the year was in Birmingham and my first ‘work’ match of this season was too; this time at a three-quarter-full Villa Park as the Villains made hard work of beating Rotherham United. It was in the last throes of Steve Bruce’s reign as Villa boss and although, thankfully, no cabbages were hurt (or hurled) in this game, the atmosphere around the stadium suggested that his time in charge was almost up.

October

One match I wished I’d attended was the one where England finally proved they could beat a top-top (© Tony Pulis) nation by winning 3-2 in Seville against Spain. They were three up at half-time as Harry Kane’s nous and the pace of Rashford and Sterling reduced Sergio Ramos to a quivering wreck. This was the kick-start to a Spurs-esque comeback that saw England go from one point after two games to winning the group and giving us another semi-final to look forward to in June when we meet The Netherlands in Guimaraes in The Nations League Finals. Which makes Southgate seem like those irritating relatives that get you gifts for Christmas that you can’t use until the summer (like a t-shirt or beach towel) but you love them all the same.

November

Off-the-pitch the highlight of 2018 could be found in Denmark and it wasn’t from a meat-only eatery. A cold Friday night in Brondby, for a Superliga match versus AGF, was the setting for something that was utterly amazing and convinced me that English football can learn a lot from our European friends. We spend our working lives measuring and assessing the quality of the fan experience and this was akin to finding a golden nugget. The best football fan zone and family lounge in the world? Probably.

December

It’s still early days – don’t forget that some English teams play about nineteen matches in six days over the festive period – but I’ve already gone Dutch four times this month and it has been a blast. It might be a bit early to say how it will end – early signs are that there is some great stuff going on – but I already love the kits. As a collector in my youth, and somewhat of a connoisseur nowadays, what’s not to love about red, navy and white stripes (it was as if Sunderland and West Brom had decided to undergo an unprecedented merger) or yellow and black stripes with white shorts and socks (think Wolves [snort], Notts County and Leeds in bed together). It’s what makes the clubs unique and gives them a unique identity (on and off the pitch) and, having seen about eighty-odd teams play in 2018, that’s what they should all be looking to have.

 

Have a fantastic Christmas.