The Football Pink

A Bulgarian national team was established in 1922, and after a crushing 6-0 drubbing by Austria, the national federation brought in some Austrian coaches and in the 1930s looked to Hungary to bring some of the silky skills of that nation to the southern Balkans. The 1960s and 70s were a golden period for Bulgarian football, with four successive appearances in the World Cup beginning in 1962 in Chile, where, after defeats to Argentina and Hungary, the Bulgarians held England to a scoreless draw. In a famously sizzling World Cup, full of magnificent matches, Bulgaria played a small part in this extravaganza of football, by opening up a 2-0 lead against Peru in their opening match, before three quick-fire goals shocked the Bulgarians, and scuppered their hopes. That 6-1 hammering by Spain is Bulgaria’s last game in a World Cup finals; and most Bulgarians would rather forget their qualification to the 2004 Euros, where they were beaten by Sweden, Denmark and Italy.

It covered, on and off the field, City’s race for the Premier League title which they’re favourites to repeat again according to just about every online bookmaker – at this stage of the season, at least. In recent times, the BBC – and Sky, who snapped up the third series, showed the Class of 92: Out of their League, which shadowed most of Manchester United’s celebrated players of that era (all expect David Beckham, in fact) as they bought and took over Salford City, and attempted to guide them upwards through the non-league pyramid. However, in the last few months particularly, Salford have perhaps been on the receiving end of a bit of a backlash, seen as a big-spending outfit pricing rivals out of the market – and attempting to buy their way into the Football League. When production company Fulwell73 started filming at Sunderland throughout the 2017-18 season, they would have hoped to capture the glory of a promotion campaign from the Championship and a return to the Premier League.

In a memoir recounting the combined folly and delights of supporting Lincoln City, Scotland and Rangers, Ian Plenderleith speaks up for the fans you never notice – the quiet ones sitting among the howlers, the shouters and the fist-shakers. Too often, too much time is given to the loud ones who curiously have little of note to say while the quiet ones, in whom deep waters run still, skulk around on the sidelines bursting with a Hegelian takedown on Rene Malic’s blogpost on how to how to break down a low (4-5-) block yet lacking the confidence to air it. After all, the vast majority of quiet footballing folk do indeed spend far too much time watching decidedly average players in decidedly average football teams, playing the same decidedly average other football teams with alarming frequency. It is odd too that for such an unassuming quiet fan, he seems prone to weird outbursts from thumping a Peterborough fan at school when he was 12 as punishment for Posh beating Lincoln City, getting into scrapes in Birmingham as an adult after a remark made in a pub is misunderstood, resulting in a “scooter-loving skinhead” leaving the club and “waiting hours for me outside” to a drunken night out resulting in him ”dry-humping a sports car that had stopped in front of us at a red light in Trafalgar Square”, which sounds all very Nicklas Bendtneresque.

As Southgate’s men progressed through the tournament, scenes of people going mental – with limbs all over the shop – went viral. Thou shalt sing, thou shalt stand throughout the entire game (sorry gramps), thou shalt consume ridiculous quantities of alcohol that’ll either put you to sleep or in prime dickhead mode once the match kicks off. I know people who go to games and barely make a noise; I know people who don’t go to games and tear their living room apart when we score; there’s the people who watch it because they’re fascinated by football; and people who solely go for the day out – having beers with their mates. Having a full, vocal away section is fantastic and a rare bonus of my team Stoke City’s return to the Championship, and the last thing I want is for us to become an Arsenalesque golf crowd – but is it worth the many Stoke fans who say they cannot or will not take their young children to away games?