Fleets’ Football Files - From Kerry Katona to Sepp Blatter!

It’s been a week of highs and lows in the football world……. On one hand you have the fantastic Champions league final in which we all saw the total footballing genius that is the Barcelona team. At the other end of the scale we have the farcical situation at FIFA.

I knew the game was special when my girlfriend was glued to the TV without talking about changing channel to ‘America’s Next Top Model’ or any reality show with Kerry Katona or Katie Price in it! It was the sort of game you see on a computer game, Barcelona seemed unable, programmed to never give the ball away! It is a cliché in football but ‘The hardest pass is the easiest’ Xavi and Iniesta must have this seared into their footballing brains because they make the game look so easy.

As my PlayStation 3 gathers dust in the living room due to neglect, there is only one person who is solely to blame…… My eight-month-old daughter, Daisy. As every parent will know, as soon as your child enters the world your time is consumed and your priorities change. My Friday afternoons are now filled with high pitch singing and plenty of splashing as we attend Water Babies, something I would have considered myself far too cool to do in my earlier years. I think the biggest change in myself I’ve noticed is that I now have no shame, I can walk around with baby food stuck to my clothes and not care…… because some things are more important.

As many of you will have read, I have a new addition to my CV, assistant manager of Sunday League team Woolhope FC. It will be a great laugh with some good friends but I can’t say that I’m not excited about dishing out some serious punishment for pre-season. I still love being involved in any standard of football whether it be watching Premiership games or straining my neck in the car to a kids’ game happening in a nearby park. My passion for the game is multiplied because it is my job and winning can affect my life and my family.

My partner and I have recently returned from Rome in Italy where we went to meet some friends who live there. I instantly fell in love with the culture and lifestyle of the Italian people; it took a bit of getting used to eating at 11-12pm at night but something we both really enjoyed. The wine did help the situation though!

Friends in football are quite a rare commodity, of course from my playing career I have amassed a large amount of people who I stay in contact with but I only class a handful of players to be really close friends. There is a saying ‘There are no friends in football’ and to an extent this is true. It is difficult to know who to trust sometimes and a lot of situations can cause you to question someone’s intentions. With a dressing room of 30 or more players, there are obvious clashes of personality and sometimes it can spill on to the training ground. Fans and the media seem surprised to see players coming to blows or having a tussle in training but it is a matter of passion and will to win. It happens all the time and most of the time you laugh it off in the shower and all is forgotten.

Embarrassment is not usually a word I associate with being a footballer but over the last week I think the whole of the footballing world has had to hang its head in shame with the row that is surrounding FIFA. It is very confusing for a professional to understand let alone the public. Mr Blatter is now the president for another four years. To have an election with only one candidate is farcical and makes a mockery of the system. No goal-line technology for the foreseeable future it seems.

Like every sport you have your heroes and villains but in football everybody loves to have someone to hate! Football is like a show, a production or a soap opera! There is a reason why Old Trafford is called the THEATRE of dreams……..