Chelsea

How my football fandom grew to fill a lockdown-shaped hole | Francisco Garcia

10-Feb-2021 11:36:35 | The Guardian

Obsessing over the beautiful game is my one release from the relentless churn of identikit pandemic days

We all have moments, often under pressure, that expose our deepest needs. Mine came in mid-January. It was a midweek pandemic evening, like any of the hundreds before it. Sorting out some washing, I cheekily threw a ball of rolled-up socks at my partner. She caught them, with excessively casual disdain. The next hour descended into a game of catch more aggressive, and more competitive, than many major sporting events.

Though the final result remains disputed, it laid bare an obvious, terrible truth about our current predicament: there is frankly nothing much to do during the long winter nights. Later that evening, things felt different. In a rare act of mercy, the broadcasting overlords provided Chelsea v Spurs as an alternative to round two of the five-set epic that had played out in the bedroom. Tension, drama, spectacle – precisely the things that have been absent in our lives for so many months.

Francisco Garcia is a London-based writer and journalist