COLIN
FIRTH IN
Excerpts
from Colin Firth's voice over from the soundtrack:
Anthropologists
have always had a hard time with football. The trouble is, you can only
see what's on the outside. But there is an inside, believe it or not.
We all have our reasons for loving things the way we do.
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Why
is it that adults aren't supposed to go mad about anything? You've got
to keep a lid on it.
And
if you don't then people are apparently entitled to say what they like:
You haven't grown up. You're a moron. Your conversation is trivial and
boorish. You can't express your emotional needs, you can't relate to your
children and you die lonely and miserable.
But,
you know, what the hell.
Every
cloud has a silver lining.
It's
not easy to become a football fan. It takes years. But if you put in the
hours you're welcomed, without question, into a new family.
Except
in this family, you care about the same people and hope for the same things.
And
what's childish about that?
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Steve:
It's the smoking.
Paul: It's not the smoking, Steve, it's the crapness.
Football
has meant too much to me, and come to represent too many things.
See,
after a while, it all gets mixed up in your head, and you can't remember
whether life's shit because Arsenal are shit or the other way around.
I've
been to watch too many games, and spent too much money, and fretted about
Arsenal when I should have been fretting about something else. I've asked
too much of the people I love.
OK.
I can accept all that.
...
But I don't know, perhaps, it's something you can't understand unless you
belong?
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What
about this? Three minutes to go and you're two--one up in a semi-final
and you look around and you see all those thousands of faces contorted
with fear and hope and worry, everyone lost, everything else gone out of
their heads... Then the whistle blows and everyone goes to spare, and just
for those few minutes, you're at the centre of the whole world. And the
fact that you care so much, that the noise you have made has been such
a crucial part of it all, is what makes it special. Because you've seen
every bit as important as the players, and if you hadn't been there, then
who'd be bothered about football, really?
And
the great thing is it comes round again and again. There's always another
season. You lose the Cup final in May, well there's the third round to
look forward to in January. And what's wrong with that? It's actually pretty
comforting if you think about it.
Most
of the time.
But
every now and then--not very often, but it happens--you catch a glimpse
of a world that doesn't work like that--a world that doesn't stop in May
and begin again in August. There's some stuff that just never comes back,
and some stuff that just won't go away, and some stuff that you can't ignore
even if you wanted to.
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When
I think back to the 26th of May 1989 now, it's impossible to explain what
happened to either of us--all three of us, if you count the team.
But
I do know this. Something happened between me and Arsenal that night. It
was as if I jumped on to the shoulders of the team and they carried me
into the light that had suddenly shown down on all of us. And the lift
they gave me enabled me to part company from them, in some ways.
We
still see each other all of the time, I still love them and hate them all
at the same time, but I have my own life now, and my own successes and
failures aren't necessarily linked up with theirs. And that's got to be
a good thing.
I
suppose.
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