The majority of you lovely people out there don’t know me personally, but if you did, you’d probably know that I’m not massively keen on sports of any kind, least of all football (the soccer kind, but you knew that already).

I gave the world cup a good proper try this time. Right at the start, I said to myself: “Chris,” for ’tis my name, “We are going to try and actually watch the world cup. It’s culturally relevant and it’s important to lots of your friends, so why don’t we actually put in a little effort this time?”

I lasted one and a half games before switching back to watching Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s ‘The Inexplicable Universe’, a documentary/lecture series about physics (TOTALLY worth a look by the way). I just don’t get that excited about sports; unlike video games, I have no personal stake in the match, and I can’t see what’s so interesting.

THEN it struck me. Why not try a football video game? The first one that wandered along was Nintendo Pocket Football Club, a little football management sim. It was on sale, so I thought ‘why not?’ and gave it a bash.

As it turns out, when you remove the primadonna players and rabid fan tribalism from football, I… I actually kinda enjoy it. It’s about strategy, and the nail-biting closeness of play near the goal line, the sweet joy of victory and the bitter tang of loss. All of this from something with tiny pixellated characters and a buttload of statistics!

Yes, as it turns out, if you nerdify sports, I suddenly become more interested in them… Maybe I should look into baseball sometime…

But, no, I probably still won’t be watching actual football. When my family gathers around the TV to watch the Germany v Argentina final… I’ll be there, leading the Redfoxes into the Advanced League on my 3DS 😀

Peace out, folks!

M.