Bloody Confused - Chapter 3

It's difficult for any writer on the contemporary game to avoid being compared to Nick Hornby; "Fever Pitch" is still the touchstone for footie literature, as Culpepper is smart to acknowledge. This debt is most evident in Chapter 3 in which Culpepper finally gets inside a Premiership ground and encounters an English crowd in all its glory.

Like Culpepper, I still marvel at the singing at European games, which is so much more romantic and poetic than the monosyllabic "Re-vo-lu-tion" chanting you get at most MLS matches. That a Cuban revolutionary song can morph into "One Tony Currie - there's only one Tony Currie" is magical. I'm not quite sure what song Culpepper is referencing when he mentions "You Are My Sunshine," though. Anyone else know?

Like Hornby, he's shocked by the language; I did enjoy the point he made about "stadium language" vs. normal language. But here's Hornby on the same issue:

"It wasn't the size of the crowd that impressed me most, however, or the way that adults were allowed to shout the word 'WANKER' as loudly as they wanted without attracting any attention. What impressed me most was just how much most of the men around me hated, really hated, being there."

With this deft passage, Hornby cuts deeper than the question of manners to speak to the bittersweet relationship we've all had with the game over the years. Now, that's poetry.