fandom snowflake day 3
Jan. 3rd, 2019 04:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaixoIn your own space, share a favorite piece of original canon (a TV episode, a song, a favorite interview, a book, a scene from a movie, etc) and explain why you love it so much. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.
My thing's football rpf at the minute, and for the source material, man... everything is drama. I think the best thing that was a favourite of mine in recent years was the Battle at Stamford Bridge. Not the English vs the Norwegian king back in the 11th century, but the Chelsea vs Spurs game 2016.
This game had a lot riding on it. Chelsea were on their biannual gardening leave, and not doing anything of note in the Premier that season; Tottenham were chasing Leicester for the title. This was Pochettino and his young Turks going for it, and fair play to them, they didn’t shy away from the ambition, or have that bumbling Britishness of wanting something but not be seeing to wanting it too much. Pochettino and the lads were desperate for it, never shied away from the questions by the journalists. They never tempered their desire for it.
Chelsea... well, Mourinho had left, especially after that business with the doctor, and Hazard and co were pretty much on the beach since oh, the season last, and they never showed up.
Until Spurs showed up, that is.
Tottenham and Chelsea have a complicated rivalry.
Unlike say, Arsenal (formerly Woolwich by name, and origin before they moved to North London back then), where there’s a local derby born out of carpetbagging and Tottenham’s loathing for it and has been going on for the past hundred or so years, Chelsea and Tottenham’s rivalry is different.
There are shades of antisemitism (on Chelsea’s side) and players who left Spurs for Chelsea (on Tottenham’s side), and just general niggles and nastiness of inbetween. Also, they are London clubs in the top flight, and save for West Ham (they sometimes go to school here, but then drop down to a dodgy comprehensive, only to pop up back in the top flight) the London clubs really have no love for each other at all, and fierce rivalries amongst them (again, save West Ham. They’ve been trying to come for Tottenham and create some form of rivalry, but what’s a rivalry when West Ham disappears in the lower divisions for a season or five, come on son).
But the point is, Chelsea and Tottenham have a rivalry born of a mix of niggle and distaste, now complicated by Spurs being competitive, yeah?
The fans carry the rivalry in their bones. The Chelsea fans hiss, baldly referring to the horrors descended on their rival fans. The rival fans drown them out with shouts of Tottenham, be it from North Side (the Park Lane). The match is played under the klieg lights of Stamford bridge. Football stadia, more circuses than colosseums at this point.
Or so we thought.
In minutes after kick off, the match veered from a matter of sporting interest to something personal. From drama to farce. The actions live in lore (or at least, on twitter), Eric Dier snapping at ankles with two footed tackles, Mousa gouging Costa in the eye, Fabregas supposedly going for another players testicles in the tunnel, and ethnic epithets that hailed from the supporters lips (allegedly) like snow in a blizzard.
Tottenham Hotspur lost control of the game. They were flying at two up, only to draw as tempers boiled and the defence melted. Composure shattered like hematite against stone floor.
Harry Kane stands in the middle with fingers pressing the ball against his hip, his face in anguish like Edvard Munch’s The Scream. He is shouting at the players to get in formation, he sees the cogs of the midfield and defense sabotaged by temper and loss of composure.
Because Harry Kane, he be knowing.
Because Harry Kane is that type of player. He’s able to see spaces and time like the best players do, and intuit the future. Kane knew before the rest of the team did, before Pochettino did (wading into the scrap to pull Rose from the fray) that Spurs’ chance to put one hand on the trophy had been snatched away.
The match ended in infamy for both teams and the referee involved.
Clattenburg (or Clats or Clatters as we Brits call him, we love an affectionate nomenclature, we do) was chastised for allowing the action of the game to overflow until it damn near broke its banks and visited a flood of emotion and action which hadn’t been seen since Noah got them animals on the boat as mentioned in passing in a few old books. Oh, Clattenburg tries to put a spin on it a year later, that he allowed Tottenham to self destruct. The excuse is as dodgy as his tattoos, but never mind me.
Tottenham were dismissed as bottlers, because Chelsea decided to stir from their season of slumber and play the game of their lives. With the tie to Chelsea, Leicester won the trophy in real time. Scenes at Jamie Vardy’s house (Leicester player) when they realised that they won. The Premier League swooned, because with Leicester winning, they were again the greatest league in the world (tm). Little Leicester, fronted by the Tinker Man, Claudio Ranieri, who went from being seeing as past it to coach rejuvenated.
And for us, those who were willing Spurs on, the sinking feeling when Eric Dier came out, did that interview with his voice shaking, face pale save the high spots of colour on his cheeks. There is the ineffable. The things unsaid because they’re too horrible to contemplate: like this might have been the best chance that Spurs would have gotten silverware since the start of the PL (1992). Or: this is the best Spurs team that might not win anything. Coupled with that with the jeers from the press, “Leicester were worthy, Spurs were Spursy” and everyone wanking themselves bloody and raw into piling accolades on Leicester, it was enough to make one give up on football for life.
But how can you, when nothing else comes as close a thrill as this: be it the ecstasy of the win, or the stunned pain of losing. Or even... the crushing abyss of relegation. Tottenham under Pochettino and his team have given me nothing but thrills and spills for the past five years. How can I turn away? Even when I’m frustrated and stymied, Tottenham always gives me more. To dare is to do, and Tottenham dared to dare, which was the best thing of all.
And that madcap match in a madcap year is why I love football, and will watch it long after I stop writing rpf. Football is the impossible made possible, human emotions multiplied to infinity.
My thing's football rpf at the minute, and for the source material, man... everything is drama. I think the best thing that was a favourite of mine in recent years was the Battle at Stamford Bridge. Not the English vs the Norwegian king back in the 11th century, but the Chelsea vs Spurs game 2016.
This game had a lot riding on it. Chelsea were on their biannual gardening leave, and not doing anything of note in the Premier that season; Tottenham were chasing Leicester for the title. This was Pochettino and his young Turks going for it, and fair play to them, they didn’t shy away from the ambition, or have that bumbling Britishness of wanting something but not be seeing to wanting it too much. Pochettino and the lads were desperate for it, never shied away from the questions by the journalists. They never tempered their desire for it.
Chelsea... well, Mourinho had left, especially after that business with the doctor, and Hazard and co were pretty much on the beach since oh, the season last, and they never showed up.
Until Spurs showed up, that is.
Tottenham and Chelsea have a complicated rivalry.
Unlike say, Arsenal (formerly Woolwich by name, and origin before they moved to North London back then), where there’s a local derby born out of carpetbagging and Tottenham’s loathing for it and has been going on for the past hundred or so years, Chelsea and Tottenham’s rivalry is different.
There are shades of antisemitism (on Chelsea’s side) and players who left Spurs for Chelsea (on Tottenham’s side), and just general niggles and nastiness of inbetween. Also, they are London clubs in the top flight, and save for West Ham (they sometimes go to school here, but then drop down to a dodgy comprehensive, only to pop up back in the top flight) the London clubs really have no love for each other at all, and fierce rivalries amongst them (again, save West Ham. They’ve been trying to come for Tottenham and create some form of rivalry, but what’s a rivalry when West Ham disappears in the lower divisions for a season or five, come on son).
But the point is, Chelsea and Tottenham have a rivalry born of a mix of niggle and distaste, now complicated by Spurs being competitive, yeah?
The fans carry the rivalry in their bones. The Chelsea fans hiss, baldly referring to the horrors descended on their rival fans. The rival fans drown them out with shouts of Tottenham, be it from North Side (the Park Lane). The match is played under the klieg lights of Stamford bridge. Football stadia, more circuses than colosseums at this point.
Or so we thought.
In minutes after kick off, the match veered from a matter of sporting interest to something personal. From drama to farce. The actions live in lore (or at least, on twitter), Eric Dier snapping at ankles with two footed tackles, Mousa gouging Costa in the eye, Fabregas supposedly going for another players testicles in the tunnel, and ethnic epithets that hailed from the supporters lips (allegedly) like snow in a blizzard.
Tottenham Hotspur lost control of the game. They were flying at two up, only to draw as tempers boiled and the defence melted. Composure shattered like hematite against stone floor.
Harry Kane stands in the middle with fingers pressing the ball against his hip, his face in anguish like Edvard Munch’s The Scream. He is shouting at the players to get in formation, he sees the cogs of the midfield and defense sabotaged by temper and loss of composure.
Because Harry Kane, he be knowing.
Because Harry Kane is that type of player. He’s able to see spaces and time like the best players do, and intuit the future. Kane knew before the rest of the team did, before Pochettino did (wading into the scrap to pull Rose from the fray) that Spurs’ chance to put one hand on the trophy had been snatched away.
The match ended in infamy for both teams and the referee involved.
Clattenburg (or Clats or Clatters as we Brits call him, we love an affectionate nomenclature, we do) was chastised for allowing the action of the game to overflow until it damn near broke its banks and visited a flood of emotion and action which hadn’t been seen since Noah got them animals on the boat as mentioned in passing in a few old books. Oh, Clattenburg tries to put a spin on it a year later, that he allowed Tottenham to self destruct. The excuse is as dodgy as his tattoos, but never mind me.
Tottenham were dismissed as bottlers, because Chelsea decided to stir from their season of slumber and play the game of their lives. With the tie to Chelsea, Leicester won the trophy in real time. Scenes at Jamie Vardy’s house (Leicester player) when they realised that they won. The Premier League swooned, because with Leicester winning, they were again the greatest league in the world (tm). Little Leicester, fronted by the Tinker Man, Claudio Ranieri, who went from being seeing as past it to coach rejuvenated.
And for us, those who were willing Spurs on, the sinking feeling when Eric Dier came out, did that interview with his voice shaking, face pale save the high spots of colour on his cheeks. There is the ineffable. The things unsaid because they’re too horrible to contemplate: like this might have been the best chance that Spurs would have gotten silverware since the start of the PL (1992). Or: this is the best Spurs team that might not win anything. Coupled with that with the jeers from the press, “Leicester were worthy, Spurs were Spursy” and everyone wanking themselves bloody and raw into piling accolades on Leicester, it was enough to make one give up on football for life.
But how can you, when nothing else comes as close a thrill as this: be it the ecstasy of the win, or the stunned pain of losing. Or even... the crushing abyss of relegation. Tottenham under Pochettino and his team have given me nothing but thrills and spills for the past five years. How can I turn away? Even when I’m frustrated and stymied, Tottenham always gives me more. To dare is to do, and Tottenham dared to dare, which was the best thing of all.
And that madcap match in a madcap year is why I love football, and will watch it long after I stop writing rpf. Football is the impossible made possible, human emotions multiplied to infinity.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-03 03:46 pm (UTC)Living in the UK means I know the teams and about football, but not in the fannish way. So reading your post was fantastic.
at times I wish didn't know football in the fannish way
Date: 2019-01-03 05:57 pm (UTC)Thank you for reading the post! I'm so glad that you enjoyed.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-03 04:41 pm (UTC)Oh wow, that's high praise
Date: 2019-01-03 05:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-03 04:43 pm (UTC)In 4c jesus' name we pray
Date: 2019-01-03 05:59 pm (UTC)Cheers for reading!
no subject
Date: 2019-01-04 03:49 pm (UTC)If I did, I'd be following Norwich City - Go Canaries! - because that's the part of England my ancestors came from, many years ago.
Football is awesome when it is, and gutting when it isn't
Date: 2019-01-05 06:38 am (UTC)But yeah, football can consume your life if you let it, fair warning.
Thanks for the compliment re: the post, although it was an easy write up because the year was absolutely madcap.