Reflection 1

I feel that reading How Football (or Soccer) explains the World was a great way to start of the semester in this class. Many people, especially in the United States, fail to recognize how much football is engrained into the culture of, well, the entire world. So much so that, even though it may have been a stretch at times, it can tell the history of a country or a religion as if they were the game themselves.

It especially put the culture of my own country in perspective for me. My family is originally from Glasgow, Scotland, so I grew up around football, and from the age of three I knew about the rivalry between Glasgow Rangers and Glasgow Celtic. It wasn't until I read this book that I actually understood how serious the rivalry was. I knew pretty much all the history of the Protestant and Catholic rivalry in Scotland, but it was only upon reading this book that I began to say to myself "Wow, that is really bad, but its completely true."

I do need to clarify some things though. I have never heard someone sing anything about Fenian blood, and I have never seen a Rangers fan wearing orange. Rangers wear dark blue and white, like the colors of the scottish flag, and Celtics wear green and white. Also, the hype around the Rangers and Celtics is not nearly as bad as it used to be. My mum told me stories of her going with her mum to visit her grandmother on the other side of Glasgow every weekend. She said that before they left, they always checked what Football games were on and where, because to come home from her grandmothers, they had to pass Ibrox stadium on the bus, and if there was a Rangers/Celtics game on, there would be fans from both teams on the bus, and there WOULD be fights. But today it is not nearly as violent as it was in the past. The last Rangers/Celtic game I went to was about four years ago, and there were no fights, and certainly no one talking about Fenian Blood. Today it is just a friendly rivalry, and it should be since those two teams are at the top of the Scottish Premier League. So this book gave me not only an insight into my own country's history, but into the history of the world.