football history: blog challenge three

I'm sure some (if not all) of you have heard this story before, but whatev. It's a good one, so don't complain! My obsession with football started in Chicago when I was 13. It was the summer of the 2002 World Cup and I was at my grandparents house for a family reunion. My aunt had just returned from Ecuador, where she had gotten married and been living for a few years, and she brought her footie-loving husband back with her. Now as far as I knew, I liked playing soccer but thought watching the sport was incredibly boring. But the two of them were so into it (going so far as waking up in the middle of the night to watch the matches live on the Spanish channels) that I got caught up by the whole thing and started watching. Well actually, I was forced to watch the first game--I had some movie on and they made me change the channel--and I am forever indebted to them because of it.

So I fell in love with the US Men's National Team. (And yes, this is where my animosity for the German NT comes from--I have still not forgiven Torsten Frings for that uncalled handball on the goal line during the quarters, and I have hated Michael Ballack and Oliver Kahn from that game on. I don't think it'll ever change.) I started watching MLS, and soon fell in love with Taylor Twellman and Brian Ching and Carlos Bocanegra. And then about a two years later, right before my junior year of high school, we switched from basic to digital cable and I discovered FSC. My life has never been the same since.

Up until that point, the only English teams I had heard of were Manchester United (of course) and Reading (because that's where Bobby Convey went when he left DC). But I figured that was a very uninformed way to make a decision about which team to support, so I took a few weeks and watched as many matches as I could. First came Man United and I was unimpressed. They just didn't do anything for me. But the first Arsenal game I saw had me hooked. Dennis Bergkamp, Bobby Pires, Titi--I fell in love with the fluid style of play, and yes I will admit, the players. The teenage Spaniard with the monster passes filling in for Patrick Vieira captured my little footie-loving heart.

And then I found out that Nick Hornby (my favorite author because of High Fidelity, Songbook, and his weekly "Stuff I've Been Reading" column in The Believer) had written a book called Fever Pitch and IT WAS ABOUT HIS OBSESSION WITH ARSENAL. Fate? I think so!

I didn't realize until I started writing this and actually tallied it up--I've only been an Arsenal fan for about 4 1/2 years. That seems so weird to me because I can't remember a time when I didn't look forward to watching football on the weekends. Now I'm looking forward to actually going to a match someday. It's gonna happen.