From posts here & my broader experience I reckon I lie within a very narrow intersection of life - I love football, I mean I really love it eg I spent 6 hours a day training and practising between the age of 18-24. Im also degree educated and a Im a reasonably accomplished long distance cyclist (15 SRs).
I feel inadequate now!
I’ve always loved football but was never any good at it. (Played for the school second XI once.)
I’m a not very accomplished long distance cyclist (2 SRs).
My uni awarded me a degree but grudgingly.
There’s a lot that’s wrong with football and all-pervasive football culture, so I can understand much of the animosity towards it from those who have no interest. I think the problem is that football being the national obsession, it represents a microcosm of wider society, including everything that’s bad about wider society. As in wider society, there are obscene amounts of money in football being concentrated into ever fewer hands, and it’s appalling.
But football also represents much of what is good about wider society - as demonstrated by the acts of Marcus Rashford and Jordan Henderson.
I mercifully avoided much exposure to hooliganism growing up. But I have been on a supporters coach leaving an away game which had rocks thrown at it by the home fans. That was pretty scary for a 12yo. (We’d also had a police corridor for protection to enter the ground.)
That didn’t put me off though. Football has given me many moments of pure unadulterated joy in my life too.
I’m not naïve enough to think hooliganism has gone away, but it mostly takes different forms now.