100 signs of football nerdery

1. Spending Sunday evening salivating over simultaneous streams of Vitoria Salvador v Corinthians and São Paulo v Fluminense from the Campeonato Brasileiro, it crossed my mind that the rest of the country was probably not with me in this endeavour.

What makes you suspect your love of the game is not as other men's?

2. Caring about youth team results

3. Caring about reserve team results

4. Spending time once a week checking the form of Eastern European teams. Partly for betting purposes, partly for just being a nerd.

5. Knowing who won the MLS cup even though David Beckham wasn't involved

oooh i don't know that one.

6. Being able to name players who play for Scottish teams who aren't at Celtic or Rangers or former Premiership players.

/for englishers.

7. Knowing who Yaya Touré was before he signed for Citeh.

lol

your love of the game is not as other men's

Oi, sexist!

Speaking as a Scottisher I'd struggle to identify half of the SPL players and pretty much anyone in the lower divisions. There just isn't enough media coverage of them and the Scottish game isn't interesting enough to me (any more) for me to be arsed researching the St Johnstone subs bench.

xp re 6

8. Getting excited when lower league dudes who you've developed an affectionate Football Manager relationship with appear on Soccer AM or Football Focus.

8. Being able to identify the new [x] without the help of football manager or shitty transfer rumours and be accurate i.e. Lacina Traore = next Adebayor

Ha xp - I usually consider women immune from nerddom, but if there's anyone who might prove me wrong...

9, sorry.

anyway, I am the go-to for my brother and a couple of my mates whenever they need to settle pub arguments. It is generally accepted that my deep-seated nerdy remembrance of facts and names etc is greater than any of their stupid bloke friends. Last night I received a stream of text messages enquiring as to the names of current and previous grounds of various lower-league teams. I don't even ask why I'm getting asked these things. Amusingly, these were sent from my mate's iPhone, so he trusted texting me more than just proving via the internet.

Let's talk about what represents nerdery irl:

10. Knowing anything about any club outside the Prem other than the one you support

7. Knowing who Yaya Touré was before he signed for Citeh.

― Ravacious Fortune (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 24 November 2010 11:41 (3 minutes ago)

this is probably closest to the truth, alas

11. Knowing that Phil Neville's put his house up for sale

knowing who lacina traoré is, including looking him on the cfr cluj website a few weeks ago, is in another category altogether

I remember watching Cluj... last season? Whenever they were in the CL anyway and thinking wow, this dude must be hell to play against. He looks so fucking awkward and gangly but with sublime touch and thought (i.e. why i didn't call him the next crouch or zigic. not that adebayor is that great with these things but the next step up is idk zlatan and he's not that good)

Speaking as a Scottisher I'd struggle to identify half of the SPL players and pretty much anyone in the lower divisions. There just isn't enough media coverage of them and the Scottish game isn't interesting enough to me (any more) for me to be arsed researching the St Johnstone subs bench.

If you showed me squad photos of every top-flight Scottish cup from the late 80s/early 90s and then showed me the same again for this season, I'd confident of still knowing more than half of guys in the 20-year-old photos of the likes of Hearts and Aberdeen, and probably would fail to recognise at least three people in the current Celtic squad :-(

12. Have had at least 2 long conversations with real world people about the plausibility of future football tactics being strikerless.

13. OTOH Have had at least 2 long irl conversations about a return to the WM or even 2-3-5 pre war formations.

14. (or maybe a 13.5) Have sat at home with a pen and paper trying to fit your team's current squad into a 2-3-5 or WM.

15. There's a full card of internationals, including all home nations, and you're settling down to watch Turkey against Belgium.

16. Panini football stickers

17. enjoying a nil-nil

18. thinking a 7-4 was terrible

19. Flying back early from your honeymoon to go to a rearranged home game

tell me that never happened

um, ok then?

It didn't happen EXACTLY like that. Rather than having two weeks in Barcelona, we had a week in Barcelona, came back home and then went off somewhere else.

It was the Champions League though! It was important!

Not to Celtic, surely?

;D

20. understanding why 'it was the champions league though' makes a difference

21. understanding why 'it was the johnstons paint trophy though' makes a difference

22. spending about 20 minutes googling for a decent euro qualifiers xls, filling it out and then doing your own actual draw for the tournament itself, and then filling that out

23. Work out what results you need in the last couple of weeks in half of the leagues in Europe in order to move your team up the seedings for the following season's European campaign.

(sadly no longer really an issue)

24. attempting to explain significance of match to flatmates/friends who have zero interest

25. torrenting fuzzy VHS-to-digital conversions of Trinidad v. USA WCQ 1990

dan wins

better have been 0-0

0-1, USA goes to first WC in 40 years

Trinidad v. USA WCQ 1990

Featured Russell Latapy at his peak iirc - hugely under-rated footballer imo.

ESPN hyped the shit out of it during the run up to the WC this year

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymQ-fIwVnV8

lot of torrenting for one fuckin goal, rest of the game was pretty much what you'd expect out of a clash between two such powers

26. converting your VHS of Trinidad v. USA WCQ 1990 to digital and uploading it

was dwight yorke in his late twenties?

addendum to 19 - you want to have seen the angst when the fixtures for that season came out after we'd booked the wedding for 2pm on the Saturday (assuming, as per previous seasons, that there wouldn't be a Glasgow derby that far into the first round of fixtures, and I figured I would skip whichever game it was if we were at home) and lo and behold the Glasgow derby was fixed for that weekend. It was moved to the Sunday for telly. Then it was going to be moved back to the Saturday for different telly. Until it got re-reverted to the Sunday there was very serious discussion about which Byres Road pub I could stand in in my wedding dress with my dad watching the game before turning up fashionably late. Turned out my first day of married life was spent letting the other half settle up with the hotel we'd stayed in after the weekend while I cleared off to the pub as soon as it opened to watch the game on my own.

Luckily other half was well-versed in my nerdery and realised this wasn't something he was getting to change about me.

Let's talk about what represents nerdery irl:

10. Knowing anything about any club outside the Prem other than the one you support

― Ravacious Fortune (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 24 November 2010 11:46 (4 hours ago) Bookmark

this, pretty much. the euro u18s goonerite/"is milos krasic a false 9? discuss" internet tactics milquetoast is kinda standardised past nerdery now tbh.

i don't think of myself as a football nerd at all (largely because i don't know shit), but on the other hand

27. talking about football on the internet.

28. listening to the MLS expansion draft

29. When your Amazon trolley is full of books about football

30. claiming that nerds of other leagues are less hardcore than you

31. knowing who scored the most usa college goals this season (soony saad! michigan! 17 or so!) and being concerned he might not turn pro.

32. going to a u-17 match, taking notes, and then posting them in a nerdville where other nerds actually care

33. Your ideal punditry panel consists of Brian Glanville. And no-one else. On the radio.

34 coma

35. Consider trying to change the tactics of the office 5aside team to catteneccio to get them off the bottom of their lunchtime league after only being there a week (they subsequently won their next two games.) ((basically worked as keeper - one talented guy down the left doing everything - three people in the middle knocking everyone over))

36. You have http://www.xs4all.nl/~kassiesa/bert/uefa/ bookmarked.

^ useful! I am not a proper nerd because I let the Celtic fanzine do all this for me, and then I just read about it. Perhaps even reading about it and some of it sinking in qualifies as nerditude - I suspect many fanzine readers go "ugh, numbers" and skip to the cracks about Rangers being ugly and skint instead.