"From where I was sitting I could probably have counted twenty thousand heads; only the sports fan (or Mick Jagger or Nelson Mandela) can do that" (19).
This quotation was a cool description of how awesome and incredible the atmosphere in a soccer stadium is. This is an important quotation because it captures the importance you feel when you watch a soccer game live. As he explains later in the book you feel big: like one big animal ready to work together and cheer for your team. It also talks about how he was instantly attached and fascinated with the fans. When I went to my first real live soccer match in Argentina (River Plate vs Newels Old Boys) soccer instantly became something bigger. It was no longer something that I was good at, practiced often, and occasionally watched on tv. It became a passion. The fact that so many people--only numbers you would see at concerts or political speeches--can all come together and make the stadium shake with cheers and passion is incredible. It is almost overwhelming the insanity of the fans. Letting yourself become one of the fans is incredible. This quotation captures how important soccer is to many peoples life, and how instantly you can be hooked to the game.
"My opportunities for intimidating people had been limited hitherto, though I knew it wasn't me that made people hurry to the other side of the road, hauling their children after them; it was us, and I was part of us, an organ in the hooligan body. The fact that I was the appendix--small, useless, hidden out of the way somewhere in the middle--didn't matter in the slightest" (54).
I this quotation, Hornby talks about how being a fan made him feel like part of a hooligan's body. It made him feel big, powerful, and part of something. He described how he wasn't a very big kid and how he often got made fun of at school. I can also imagine that because of his parents divorce he would often feel powerless. Being a soccer fan was exactly what he needed: It made him feel big, strong, reckless, and powerful, all things he didn't have in his life apart from soccer.
"The audiences I had hitherto been a part of had paid to have a good time and, though occasionally one might spot a fidgety child or a yawning adult, I hadn't ever noticed faces contorted by rage or dispare or frustration. Entertainment as pain was an idea entirely new to me, and it seemed to be something I'd been waiting for" (21).
In this quotation, he talks more about how watching soccer includes pain and frustration, and for him the pain and frustration hooked him to the game and gave him a place where he could openly be unhappy.
"(...Let's say that three thousand of these are away supporters; that means that among the remaining fourteen thousand from Derby, there were a number of people who went at least eighteen times to see the worst football of last or indeed most other seasons. Why, really, should anyone have gone at all?)" (19).
To me this quotation relates to how for Hornby being a fan includes suffering. He feels in order to be a true fan you have to make the away games, watch your team in the freezing rain, and most importantly suffer with the team. I also like this quotation because it captures Hornby's unique writing voice. Hornby likes to use parenthetical writing, which is very funny(as we discussed in class his writing is more of a COL--chuckle out loud--than a LOL). He also has his own very distinct writing voice. This quotation shows how no mater how bad the team, there will always be the obsessed soccer fan.
"I just didn't want to have fun at football. I had fun everywhere else, and I was sick of it. What I needed more than anything was a place where unfocused unhappiness could thrive, where I could be still and worry and mope; I had the blues, and when I watched my team I could unwrap them and let them breathe a little" (43).
This quotation really explains how being a soccer fan was an escape from life for Hornby. Watching a game created a place where he could let out his sorrows and unhappiness. Suffering for him was part of what made being a fan important. Suffering was a comfort for him. Watching his team alowed him to unwrap his blues.
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