Totally, I attend a lot of National League games. The standard is still worlds above anything anyone here could even dream of getting close to.

Yet when we got to the FA Cup third round and played Watford, up close this PL also-ran team were on another planet.

Any of those Watford players (Deeney aside) would be deemed “average” by most people here yet were probably in the top 1% of football pros on the planet.

Was in the ground when Paris Cowan-Hall (mostly a League 2 journeyman) boshed this lob in on about 30 seconds: https://youtu.be/DaVf6M2cfXI?si=1q2lM1KMJzucjK1Y

Spilt my chips and didn’t care.

I mentioned elsewhere that my sixth form college was home to the academy team of our local National League team.

As part of the academy, they could do a sports BTEC so they left with some recognised qualifications.

My A-Level PE teacher taught some of the classes. One week they were all messing around, as per usual, and he just lost his rag a bit and asked the ringleaders “boys, you’re 17/18 years old, what are you going to be in 3-4 years time?”

All replied “a footballer sir” full of all the expected confidence and bravado.

He replied, “right. You’re all aware that only 2% of academy players end up playing regularly at the level of their parent club? There’s 20 of you in this class so statistically, none of you will make it at this level. Bear in mind, you’re at the academy of a semi-pro team. Your senior team teammates that you can’t get in the squad ahead of are plumbers, electricians, and PE teachers from 9-5 Monday to Friday. And you all think you’ll be the exception?”

He said he liked to think the switch flicked in a few of their heads, but there was still this desperate belief they could make it. This had been their whole purpose and identity since they were toddlers, the hard hit of reality and having no solid back-up option wasn’t something they were looking forward to.

It’s clearly a silly little joke and people are getting really wound up about it. Very odd behaviour.

I mean, it’s pretty obvious it’s a throwaway joke. Wild how many people are taking this super seriously.

It’s clearly a joke.