A Plastics Guide To Football

Football was invented in 1992 by Rupert Murdoch. As a way to sell advertising space. Originally he named the sport soccer but despite using it in every single programme Sky have done on the sport it has never caught on.

Because Murdoch is Australian football originally only took place in the winter months leaving the summers free for the Australian national game of cricket. However a cunning flag maker realised he could capitalise on the new sports popularity and increase the sales of his national flags by creating an international tournament played every other summer. Sometimes this is called the World Cup and sometimes it is called the European Championships, no one is certain why but it is believed it is so kit manufacturers can make more money by releasing a different kit for each tournament.

In England their are 20 teams, or clubs, who contest a competition called the Premier League. Out of these clubs only 4 are worth supporting. These are Man Utd, Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool. Although no one knows why Liverpool are included in that quartet as they've never won anything.

Originally the league was a free competition where anyone who played in it could win which led to Blackburn once becoming the Premier League champions. Rupert Murdoch was outraged by these events as no one knew where Blackburn was. Subsequently it was decided that Man Utd would win the league from there on in. This monopoly meant that people lost interest so Arsenal and later Chelsea were then allowed to occasionally win the League.

Choosing which team to support is very difficult. Although there are no rules against supporting your local team it is frowned upon. Therefore as a rule if you live in London it is safest to choose Man Utd. However if you come from outside of England you might prefer to choose Arsenal as they are the Premier League's one foreign team.

Football is played in large stadiums, some like Arsenal's and Man Utd's are perfectly safe and even quite pleasant. Some, however, are just huge pits in which local chavs are thrown so that there is an atmosphere at the match. The most well known of these pits is called Stamford Bridge. Of course it is entirely unnecessary to actually go to these stadiums as the BBC show highlights of all the matches on a saturday night.

In recent years there have been calls to have another team come into the big 4. A team called Tottenham have claimed that they should be there instead of Arsenal. This has caused a big rift between the two teams who used to be peaceful neighbours. Despite Tottenham's claims that they can be just as foreign as Arsenal, their stadium is a bigger chav-pit than Chelsea's and they've won just as little as Liverpool seem to have fallen on deaf ears. Perhaps if they moved their stadium up north in order to get a good solid London fan base they might be more succesful.

Remember once you've picked your team there is no guarantee that they'll keep winning things so be prepared to swap at the drop of a hat.