Growing a Football Fan

By Jamie Bell

I can’t say I’ve ever really been any more than a fair weather football fan. 

I got behind Sweden at the 1994 World Cup: the “baby-faced assassin” nickname sticking in my head for 28 years, but I had to Google to find out it was Tomas Brolin’s moniker. I also had to Google where they finished in the tournament, happily finding out I’d backed an underdog that came in third.

In 1998, I dropped to supporting the fourth-placed team, backing the Dutch. By 2002, Raúl and the Spanish side were my pick.

But none of that support was real. It was just convenient: I wanted to enjoy the tournament, and it helped to have a dog in the fight. 

When I moved into my first flat at university, I had a bunch of flatmates with strong allegiances to Premier League teams. I couldn’t get my head around the passion centred on teams based a world away but I wanted to be part of it, whatever it was, so I picked a plucky underdog: West Bromich Albion.

Keeping my tradition alive, I’ve just Googled how their season is going.
Not so plucky in 2022.

Last week I was talking to a colleague about his support of Liverpool, and my 8-year-old son’s own search for a team to back. My colleague followed Liverpool because his dad did. His dad followed Liverpool because, when he migrated to New Zealand, the first football game he saw was a televised FA Cup final featuring Liverpool.

It highlighted the intergenerational nature of supporting these teams, and the challenge for me and my son – a kid developing a passion for football, and a dad trying to grow a football fan without having been a proper one himself.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the game. I’ve played a lot of sports across circa 40 years and, in all honesty, football is probably the one I’ve enjoyed playing the most. The feeling of putting the ball into the netting is up there with watching a stump tumble out of the ground, which says a lot for someone for whom there is no doubt that cricket is their number one.

So here I am, looking to encourage a kid who plays football at morning tea and lunchtime. Who asks me to take him for a kick around when I get home from work, and most weekend afternoons. Who played his first season of winter football and is promptly following it up with summer football.

His fandom is developing through playing FIFA and the little interactions he has outside of that. He started with PSG. Then moved to Liverpool because his mate’s a fan. He’s got a season going with Dortmund. But that one’s paused so he can play as Bayern Munich. His summer football team wear AC Milan kit so he’s had a go with them. The Football Ferns got a run in some internationals too.

He absolutely has one team locked in, though. The Wellington Phoenix.

Even then, though, it’s players that catch his attention. His Phoenix season in FIFA was short, because he realised he can play as any team and empty their transfer accounts buying Ben Waine and Oli Sail. The second week of the holidays was spent receiving updates on Waine’s efforts up front alongside Griezmann with delivery from Messi.

Last weekend, we skipped Sky Stadium to watch the Phoenix at home. His emotions poured out through first pumps and leaps from couch to couch: celebrating his favourite player chip the keeper while trying to wrap his head around VAR; the pure joy of a late equaliser and the battle to understand why that tackle is a yellow card and that, exact same, tackle is play on.

Still, I feel some pressure for him to have a moment – like watching the FA Cup final and sticking with that team for generations. I want him to know what it’s like to feel the highs and lows of fandom, like he is with the Phoenix but on a bigger scale.

I guess, though, that’s some version of me trying to live through him. He’s a fan of the game above all else and, for him, the Phoenix are absolutely enough.

So I’ll let him be him, and I’ll continue my quest. 

Right now, I have the words of Wrexham AFC co-owner, Ryan Reynolds cycling in my head: “Sport is storytelling.”

They’re quickly followed by a catchy tune:

“We’ve got Mullin,
Super Paul Mullin,
I just don’t think you understand.”

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