Football But Not as We Know It

Watching the Champion's League at the moment, flicking between three of my least favourite football teams on the planet, Liverpool, Arsenal and Rangers. Unfortunately all are winning.

I hate the Champion's League. Along with the Premier League in England, it stands for all that's wrong with the game. It has whored itself out to the highest bidders on the corporate side and the so-called big clubs have turned it into a cartel where the chances of a club like Aberdeen ever winning a European Trophy again are zero. They hoard the money for themselves, excluding everyone else in the process.

The Leagues I mentioned have, along with Sky, attracted the most insufferable of supporters, who have no feeling for the history of the game, glory hunt around the most successful clubs and call football "footy". These fans, or bastards as I prefer to call them, know nothing about the game outwith the EPL and Champion's League. Ask them who the oldest club in the world are, or who are the only Scottish Club to win two European trophies they won't have a clue.

Look at the adverts in between the Champion's League games or Sky's "Super Sunday". Smiling goons kicking footballs around car parks loving "the beautiful game." It's crass, vacuous stuff that drives me up the wall.

Of course I am a complete hypocrite and have Sky and watch the matches. But unlike the johnny come lately's I do not think football was invented in 1992.

Football is a game you need to feel in your soul. To me that involves the tribal instincts of supporting your local club. Not driving from Buckie to Celtic Park every week, putting on a Glaswegian accent as you pass Cumbernauld and pretending you've "always been a Celticmanbyrawaybut".

Anyone for a prawn sandwich?

Tonight's music. The European Song by the Aberdeen Football Club 1983 European Cup Winner's Cup winning team. From the days when teams won trophies on talent and merit, not on who has the most money.

PS Answers to the football matches are either Notts County or Sheffield FC for the oldest club in world depending on how you define it and no doubt about the answer to the 2nd question - the mighty Aberdeen!