"Watch the news!" When rogue players express interesting views

Reading interviews with active footballers is like beach-combing with a blindfold on. The chances of stumbling on something worthwhile among the miles of sand and seaweed are as high as a player saying something interesting under the watchful auspices of their agents and club press officers. Very occasionally, though, you might come across a pearl, or at least a nice colourful cowrie.

"If someone says football's the
 only thing in my life, I
think that's stupid."

It's especially pleasing to hear from players who can look beyond the game. In the latest issue of German monthly 11 Freunde, the Hoffenheim striker Sandro Wagner talks about football's place in society. Wagner, who made his German international debut this past summer at the age of 29, is a feisty, physical player who, to say the least, has made himself unpopular down the years with opposing fans thanks to his robust style. He fouls a lot, and he gets fouled a lot.

I like him, though. Last season when he played for Hoffenheim at Eintracht Frankfurt he took a nasty, deliberate elbow to the face from Frankfurt's captain David Abraham, which went unseen and unpunished by the referees. Wagner got up, played on, and after the game made no fuss about it at all. In the 11 Freunde interview he says that Abraham apologised for the incident even as the game was still being played, and for him that was the end of the matter.

What I really like in the interview, though, is when he answers the question, "Do fans take football too seriously?" Wagner replies, "I see it like a lot of fans do - I love football, it's the greatest sport in the world. But many go over the top. If someone says to me, football's the only thing in my life, then I think that's stupid. To someone like that I

Who are "the fans"? None of us, all of us

Why I Wrote The Quiet Fan

As a book title, The Quiet Fan is meant to be more than slightly tongue in cheek. Sometimes I'm quiet when I watch a game (through shyness, fear, boredom or indifference), and sometimes I'm as noisy as hell (thrilled, annoyed, or I just feel like shouting out loud). I haven't written this book to point out the virtues of being quiet. In fact, it's the opposite. The quiet fan is the unrepresented fan - and that's pretty much all of us. I've had it with the idle pigeonholing of fans as violent morons (70s/80s), or dupes willing to do anything and buy anything for the sake of their team (90s and beyond).

"A Fan's Life."
One fan's life.

Fever Pitch was a good enough work, but it was only one fan's experience. One of the book's consequences (not Nick Hornby's fault) was the media's abandonment of its previous fan stereotype, the drunken hooligan (see Hillsborough and everything that came before). In itself, this wasn't a bad thing. It was published shortly after Paul Gascoigne's tears at Italia 90, and an emerging fan culture that had actually started to enjoy being in the stadium. The downside was that the apparent hooligan was replaced by the apparent fanatic - the obsessive, the so-called real fan. The only true and proper fans were season ticket holders who cared about their team to the exclusion of all else in life. This fan lived for something now called 'footie' and had no family (or at least none they paid attention to), and no life to speak of outside of the game. Emotionally inadequate misfits to be pitied and patronised, yet moulded and manipulated into becoming the Sky era's "passionate" customer core.

I dislike being told when I have to be passionate, or that I have to be passionate at all. I dislike being told that I would do anything for my team. No I wouldn't, and neither would most of the fans I've ever met. We don't always get angry when our