Many of us, seasoned and obsessive viewers of football at the stadium or on TV, came reluctantly to the spectacle of this year's Fifa World Cup. Not only was the lead-up to this global watchfest, through indescribably tasteless promotion and toadying by Fifa president Gianni Infantino, calculated to repel us, but evidence of racial and political bias multiplied apace as the tournament got underway.
Nevertheless, fandom is a complex psychological disorder, as Nick Hornby's classic 1992 auto-analysis, Fever Pitch, demonstrated. So, despite my own resolve not to watch a single match, I was sucked in like all the rest, paying up resentfully for the glitchy and exorbitantly priced ZEE5 app, and staying up night after night to get my football fix.
