When you're a kid, there are many things that you cannot control and only a few that you can.
For example, you can't carefully select who you want as your brother or sister or handpick your parents. You can't make the best looking girl in the playground fancy you even if you tell her best mates to put in a good word. And under no circumstances can you fly (even if you jump off a really tall tree in the woods and flap your arms really fast.)
You can, however, pick your football team but that has its dangers too:
once you pick one, there's no going back.
Unless these words have been chewed up by cyberspace and spat out where they shouldn't have been, you chose to support United.
Well done, good choice.
The only choice you may say. Aren't you lucky you didn't pick the other lot from Manchester? Or the other "Reds" from up the road?
You see, your childhood soccer selection takes you on a journey of unprecedented highs or unenviable lows, or in some games, both.
It's the most important decision you make in your life.
Fact.
And we all like to deal in facts, don't we?
Especially this weekend. What many kids don't realise at first though, is that when you pick a football team to love, you automatically select one or two to hate as well. That's what makes weekends like this one all the more enjoyable if you win and excruciatingly awful if you lose.
Speaking of which, many fans, pundits and ex-players have argued this week that Liverpool have nothing to lose when they arrive at the Theatre of Dreams because they've already lost the league.
For my sins, I have a friend who supports the Anfield Reds.
When he was a kid, he made a choice just like you but picked differently.
Yesterday, he proudly exclaimed: "We don't bother playing well in the league, we save ourselves for Europe."
Aren't you lucky you picked a team that can do both and ain't too shabby in the cups either?
For example, you can't carefully select who you want as your brother or sister or handpick your parents. You can't make the best looking girl in the playground fancy you even if you tell her best mates to put in a good word. And under no circumstances can you fly (even if you jump off a really tall tree in the woods and flap your arms really fast.)
You can, however, pick your football team but that has its dangers too:
once you pick one, there's no going back.
Unless these words have been chewed up by cyberspace and spat out where they shouldn't have been, you chose to support United.
Well done, good choice.
The only choice you may say. Aren't you lucky you didn't pick the other lot from Manchester? Or the other "Reds" from up the road?
You see, your childhood soccer selection takes you on a journey of unprecedented highs or unenviable lows, or in some games, both.
It's the most important decision you make in your life.
Fact.
And we all like to deal in facts, don't we?
Especially this weekend. What many kids don't realise at first though, is that when you pick a football team to love, you automatically select one or two to hate as well. That's what makes weekends like this one all the more enjoyable if you win and excruciatingly awful if you lose.
Speaking of which, many fans, pundits and ex-players have argued this week that Liverpool have nothing to lose when they arrive at the Theatre of Dreams because they've already lost the league.
For my sins, I have a friend who supports the Anfield Reds.
When he was a kid, he made a choice just like you but picked differently.
Yesterday, he proudly exclaimed: "We don't bother playing well in the league, we save ourselves for Europe."
Aren't you lucky you picked a team that can do both and ain't too shabby in the cups either?
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