If I were to just type that United are playing badly some United lifelong supporter is going to barge in whose father was a United fan, whose grandfather was a United fan, whose great grandfather was a United fan and tell you that the stats show that Ten Hag has scored more points than SAF or Klopp or Mourinho or whoever. When I see such people and there are millions of them worldwide and especially in the UK I automatically wonder if you have to be low IQ to be a football fan. You don’t need stats to tell you that United are terrible. If you have eyes you can see that they are scrapping through and not heading in the right direction. On the other hand if you can understand football you could have figured out that Chelsea on the other hand for all their defeats are headed in the right direction. They might be down in the points table but there is a plan that is slowly working at Chelsea. If you just give it time they will be in the reckoning sooner or later. How is something as basic as this not evident to people.
Football is the most popular sport worldwide, 1.5 BILLION people watched the 2022 World Cup final live. The vast majority of those people don’t watch full games. There are millions of casual fans out there that only watch some finals here and there and their only engagement with football is through Tiktok clips and the EA Sports FC game.
The answer to many stupid takes of modern “fans” is that most people don’t actually bother to actually watch and understand the game anymore. Which fans do you believe support ETH, or think that Emi Martinez is the best goalkeeper in the world? People who watch EPL weekly? Or just casual fans that only watched the WC KO stage and only saw that Manchester United play in the UCL, so they must be a good team? Do you think journalists vote for Ballon d’Or based on who was actually the best throughout the season? Or it just who the casuals think it is? Because yeah, as someone who watches hundreds of games per season, the 2023 winner wouldn’t even be in my top 5. But ask a casual who only watched the WC and doesn’t watch football daily and you’ll see what I mean.