Essential The Official Football (Soccer) Thread - We are SO back, the Premier League returns!

[Grams]

Well I'm a 3 so

 

[So UnThotful]

6

 

[yoyoyo1]

This blend of history, hope, yearning and passion is what football is all about

George Caulkin - The Times

This is it. This. That flutter in the belly, that sprinkle of nerves, that wondrous, aching possibility of this time, this time, for God’s sake PLEASE let it be this time. That cacophonous train ride, that lad sitting opposite decanting booze into Ribena bottles, that motorway convoy, scarves trailing from windows, that persistent, pissed memory from last night: your mate in a copper’s helmet, sopping and shivering in the Trafalgar Square fountains. This is it.

This is what football is. What it was. That walk towards Wembley, at once familiar and new, the old chants and the remixes, scorching the air. The fella you recognise from a few seats along at the Stadium of Light, who never stops moaning – that miserable git – but he’s strolling beside you and he’s neither miserable or moaning, because he’s shepherding his kids, fussing and smiling. They couldn’t miss this. Not this.

This is it. Not enough to obliterate all those disappointments, those bitter, loveless relegations, but you wouldn’t want that, anyway. They are part of who you are. Part of Sunderland. And whether you stopped going or persevered, whether you are an addict or a convert, a malcontent or a loyalist, this is your patience through adversity, your gallows humour, those howls of anguish. This is why you do what you always do; bear witness and sing.

But this is how it should feel. This is less about winning – although you wouldn’t say no – than giving it a go. Trying everything and then heaving a bit more. Not holding yourself in. Seeing a flash of silver across the stadium and knowing that 90 minutes could mean a long journey’s end and another beginning. This adrenaline. This soppy descent into cliches about heroes and giant-killings, those stories about Stokoe’s sprint and Monty’s sorcery. About daring to dream.

This is why your dad passed down that beautiful, cursed birthright. Your mam or your sister, brother or friends. This is why he stood at Roker Park, so cold and crammed that his legs were locked and leaden. This is why you shook together at those reserve-games, why you stayed outside when the rain whipped in, your mouth numb and nose running. This is why you put up with his stupid music on that endless away trip. This is all those feelings like love and loss, straining for release.

This is Sunderland, your Sunderland. This is your city, your town, your village, your region, forgotten sometimes and left to suffer, but prominent now, loud and raucous. This is supporters’ associations and local branches, working men’s clubs, community and togetherness, collective strength, being part of something both greater than and intrinsically you. This is pride – stinging tears of pride. This is raising your head and gazing at the sky, not staring down at your navel.

This. Not that great, grotesque lie about priorities. Not swallowing the guff that one season of toil should be superseded by another, that having endured the delights of Stoke City, the only ambition must be straining to get to Stoke again. You know what Stoke’s like. Christ. Aston Villa, Crystal Palace. Tick them off. Been there, seen it and, you know what, they’re not that much different from Leicester, Queens Park Rangers and Birmingham.

Not couldn’t be arsed. Not withdrawing your best players for a one-off match because of 38 league games which simply must take precedence in a cold, grey world of sporting accountancy. Not fear. Not dread. Not measly, weasel-word excuses for laying waste to tradition because of avarice or arrogance and cowardice. Not name-changes and colour-swaps and franchises, or a stadium’s brutal nobility scarred by garish advertising hoardings for money-lenders and tat-hawkers.

Not the bottom-line. Not the profits or the losses, the turnover and the revenue, the wage-bills and the relegation-clauses, because when the files are lodged at Companies House, they will not be hailed with an open-top bus ride, a civic reception, or a hazy, alcoholic day which stays lodged in the brain. Not Financial Fair Play, not billionaires, not the stodge of mid-table and totting up television revenue after one more lunchtime kick-off and a 200-mile journey.

Which is not to toss away the prospect of staying up. Nor to deny that it matters for progress and development and all those other birds which have never quite flown. But neither is it everything, because you’ve slumped before and ricocheted back. Having squirmed through long, sapping sequences in every single season since Roy Keane and Niall Quinn secured your return to this ceaseless, daft, grasping jamboree, you reckon you can cope.

This, though. This is something. This is different. This is booking your London hotel en route from that draining, life-affirming semi-final, when those caustic commentaries about the worst penalty shoot-out in the history of awful penalty shoot-outs missed the point entirely. It was the best. This is snaking, sluggish, twitchy queues outside the box office, 80,000 frantic telephone calls on a single day, begging for favours, scurrying for tickets.

This is a day out and a night away, a daubed blur of red and white. This, like the song says, is cheesy chips on Wembley Way. And win or lose, this will be recorded and you were there, one small figure lost amid the din, but integral to it, which, in the final analysis, is what clubs and their supporters should mean. What football is. This is history, hope, yearning and passion, maybes and meaning, exquisite agony, wild abandon, love. This is you. This is Sunderland. This is it.

 

[mastermind]

OFT rate her 1-10

Spoiler

4

#MidnightBoyz should only be going at 5 and above (well really 5 to 5.5 because we are midnight boyz)

 

[Grams]

4

#MidnightBoyz should only be going at 5 and above (well really 5 to 5.5 because we are midnight boyz)

Abeg did you see the full instagram profile? These non #MidnightBoyz don't know what we have to deal with in life breh. A regular 4 is a #MB 6.5 you know

 

[Grams]

@EQ. Kimbra is looking kinda thick still

 

[Grams]

This blend of history, hope, yearning and passion is what football is all about

George Caulkin - The Times

This is it. This. That flutter in the belly, that sprinkle of nerves, that wondrous, aching possibility of this time, this time, for God’s sake PLEASE let it be this time. That cacophonous train ride, that lad sitting opposite decanting booze into Ribena bottles, that motorway convoy, scarves trailing from windows, that persistent, pissed memory from last night: your mate in a copper’s helmet, sopping and shivering in the Trafalgar Square fountains. This is it.

This is what football is. What it was. That walk towards Wembley, at once familiar and new, the old chants and the remixes, scorching the air. The fella you recognise from a few seats along at the Stadium of Light, who never stops moaning – that miserable git – but he’s strolling beside you and he’s neither miserable or moaning, because he’s shepherding his kids, fussing and smiling. They couldn’t miss this. Not this.

This is it. Not enough to obliterate all those disappointments, those bitter, loveless relegations, but you wouldn’t want that, anyway. They are part of who you are. Part of Sunderland. And whether you stopped going or persevered, whether you are an addict or a convert, a malcontent or a loyalist, this is your patience through adversity, your gallows humour, those howls of anguish. This is why you do what you always do; bear witness and sing.

But this is how it should feel. This is less about winning – although you wouldn’t say no – than giving it a go. Trying everything and then heaving a bit more. Not holding yourself in. Seeing a flash of silver across the stadium and knowing that 90 minutes could mean a long journey’s end and another beginning. This adrenaline. This soppy descent into cliches about heroes and giant-killings, those stories about Stokoe’s sprint and Monty’s sorcery. About daring to dream.

This is why your dad passed down that beautiful, cursed birthright. Your mam or your sister, brother or friends. This is why he stood at Roker Park, so cold and crammed that his legs were locked and leaden. This is why you shook together at those reserve-games, why you stayed outside when the rain whipped in, your mouth numb and nose running. This is why you put up with his stupid music on that endless away trip. This is all those feelings like love and loss, straining for release.

This is Sunderland, your Sunderland. This is your city, your town, your village, your region, forgotten sometimes and left to suffer, but prominent now, loud and raucous. This is supporters’ associations and local branches, working men’s clubs, community and togetherness, collective strength, being part of something both greater than and intrinsically you. This is pride – stinging tears of pride. This is raising your head and gazing at the sky, not staring down at your navel.

This. Not that great, grotesque lie about priorities. Not swallowing the guff that one season of toil should be superseded by another, that having endured the delights of Stoke City, the only ambition must be straining to get to Stoke again. You know what Stoke’s like. Christ. Aston Villa, Crystal Palace. Tick them off. Been there, seen it and, you know what, they’re not that much different from Leicester, Queens Park Rangers and Birmingham.

Not couldn’t be arsed. Not withdrawing your best players for a one-off match because of 38 league games which simply must take precedence in a cold, grey world of sporting accountancy. Not fear. Not dread. Not measly, weasel-word excuses for laying waste to tradition because of avarice or arrogance and cowardice. Not name-changes and colour-swaps and franchises, or a stadium’s brutal nobility scarred by garish advertising hoardings for money-lenders and tat-hawkers.

Not the bottom-line. Not the profits or the losses, the turnover and the revenue, the wage-bills and the relegation-clauses, because when the files are lodged at Companies House, they will not be hailed with an open-top bus ride, a civic reception, or a hazy, alcoholic day which stays lodged in the brain. Not Financial Fair Play, not billionaires, not the stodge of mid-table and totting up television revenue after one more lunchtime kick-off and a 200-mile journey.

Which is not to toss away the prospect of staying up. Nor to deny that it matters for progress and development and all those other birds which have never quite flown. But neither is it everything, because you’ve slumped before and ricocheted back. Having squirmed through long, sapping sequences in every single season since Roy Keane and Niall Quinn secured your return to this ceaseless, daft, grasping jamboree, you reckon you can cope.

This, though. This is something. This is different. This is booking your London hotel en route from that draining, life-affirming semi-final, when those caustic commentaries about the worst penalty shoot-out in the history of awful penalty shoot-outs missed the point entirely. It was the best. This is snaking, sluggish, twitchy queues outside the box office, 80,000 frantic telephone calls on a single day, begging for favours, scurrying for tickets.

This is a day out and a night away, a daubed blur of red and white. This, like the song says, is cheesy chips on Wembley Way. And win or lose, this will be recorded and you were there, one small figure lost amid the din, but integral to it, which, in the final analysis, is what clubs and their supporters should mean. What football is. This is history, hope, yearning and passion, maybes and meaning, exquisite agony, wild abandon, love. This is you. This is Sunderland. This is it.

fukk Sunderland I actually want City to smack them 6-0

 

[yoyoyo1]

I'm the ultimate flip-flopper for this one

after Jozy is the starter for last month or two rumor is Poyet will bench him for the final, which is just wrong IMO

then I'll be rooting for the 6-0 and relegation.

either way they get smashed tho

 

[EQ.]

@EQ. Kimbra is looking kinda thick still

well, damn. She's always kicking it with eclectic type brothas, lucky i'm a fan of thundercat or i woulda been dropping straight at him for being that close to get a whiff of her axe wound

 

[Grams]

well, damn. She's always kicking it with eclectic type brothas, lucky i'm a fan of thundercat or i woulda been dropping straight at him for being that close to get a whiff of her axe wound

Must be nice

 

[Roaden Polynice]

@yoyoyo1 @penfield @Ari Gold Bawse abeg look at the full instagram.

Spoiler

http://instagram.com/aftonlmanny

Checked out her insta...nothing special and I love average white women.

This blend of history, hope, yearning and passion is what football is all about

George Caulkin - The Times

This is it. This. That flutter in the belly, that sprinkle of nerves, that wondrous, aching possibility of this time, this time, for God’s sake PLEASE let it be this time. That cacophonous train ride, that lad sitting opposite decanting booze into Ribena bottles, that motorway convoy, scarves trailing from windows, that persistent, pissed memory from last night: your mate in a copper’s helmet, sopping and shivering in the Trafalgar Square fountains. This is it.

This is what football is. What it was. That walk towards Wembley, at once familiar and new, the old chants and the remixes, scorching the air. The fella you recognise from a few seats along at the Stadium of Light, who never stops moaning – that miserable git – but he’s strolling beside you and he’s neither miserable or moaning, because he’s shepherding his kids, fussing and smiling. They couldn’t miss this. Not this.

This is it. Not enough to obliterate all those disappointments, those bitter, loveless relegations, but you wouldn’t want that, anyway. They are part of who you are. Part of Sunderland. And whether you stopped going or persevered, whether you are an addict or a convert, a malcontent or a loyalist, this is your patience through adversity, your gallows humour, those howls of anguish. This is why you do what you always do; bear witness and sing.

But this is how it should feel. This is less about winning – although you wouldn’t say no – than giving it a go. Trying everything and then heaving a bit more. Not holding yourself in. Seeing a flash of silver across the stadium and knowing that 90 minutes could mean a long journey’s end and another beginning. This adrenaline. This soppy descent into cliches about heroes and giant-killings, those stories about Stokoe’s sprint and Monty’s sorcery. About daring to dream.

This is why your dad passed down that beautiful, cursed birthright. Your mam or your sister, brother or friends. This is why he stood at Roker Park, so cold and crammed that his legs were locked and leaden. This is why you shook together at those reserve-games, why you stayed outside when the rain whipped in, your mouth numb and nose running. This is why you put up with his stupid music on that endless away trip. This is all those feelings like love and loss, straining for release.

This is Sunderland, your Sunderland. This is your city, your town, your village, your region, forgotten sometimes and left to suffer, but prominent now, loud and raucous. This is supporters’ associations and local branches, working men’s clubs, community and togetherness, collective strength, being part of something both greater than and intrinsically you. This is pride – stinging tears of pride. This is raising your head and gazing at the sky, not staring down at your navel.

This. Not that great, grotesque lie about priorities. Not swallowing the guff that one season of toil should be superseded by another, that having endured the delights of Stoke City, the only ambition must be straining to get to Stoke again. You know what Stoke’s like. Christ. Aston Villa, Crystal Palace. Tick them off. Been there, seen it and, you know what, they’re not that much different from Leicester, Queens Park Rangers and Birmingham.

Not couldn’t be arsed. Not withdrawing your best players for a one-off match because of 38 league games which simply must take precedence in a cold, grey world of sporting accountancy. Not fear. Not dread. Not measly, weasel-word excuses for laying waste to tradition because of avarice or arrogance and cowardice. Not name-changes and colour-swaps and franchises, or a stadium’s brutal nobility scarred by garish advertising hoardings for money-lenders and tat-hawkers.

Not the bottom-line. Not the profits or the losses, the turnover and the revenue, the wage-bills and the relegation-clauses, because when the files are lodged at Companies House, they will not be hailed with an open-top bus ride, a civic reception, or a hazy, alcoholic day which stays lodged in the brain. Not Financial Fair Play, not billionaires, not the stodge of mid-table and totting up television revenue after one more lunchtime kick-off and a 200-mile journey.

Which is not to toss away the prospect of staying up. Nor to deny that it matters for progress and development and all those other birds which have never quite flown. But neither is it everything, because you’ve slumped before and ricocheted back. Having squirmed through long, sapping sequences in every single season since Roy Keane and Niall Quinn secured your return to this ceaseless, daft, grasping jamboree, you reckon you can cope.

This, though. This is something. This is different. This is booking your London hotel en route from that draining, life-affirming semi-final, when those caustic commentaries about the worst penalty shoot-out in the history of awful penalty shoot-outs missed the point entirely. It was the best. This is snaking, sluggish, twitchy queues outside the box office, 80,000 frantic telephone calls on a single day, begging for favours, scurrying for tickets.

This is a day out and a night away, a daubed blur of red and white. This, like the song says, is cheesy chips on Wembley Way. And win or lose, this will be recorded and you were there, one small figure lost amid the din, but integral to it, which, in the final analysis, is what clubs and their supporters should mean. What football is. This is history, hope, yearning and passion, maybes and meaning, exquisite agony, wild abandon, love. This is you. This is Sunderland. This is it.

I didn't even read this but this is long as fukk

Edit: I just realized you didn't even write this

 

[Clapsteel O'Neal]

tried mandy for the first time 2nite lads (pure mdma cos my boy copped it from silk road on the deep web )...had only smoked weed and wasnt on doing the extra sh1te



























best most happy sociable experience 6hrs of my life brehs, no gas


man was stuck on mode the whole time and didnt sweat at all


its 8am and im going to bed, catch you all later brehs


oh and i proved to myself i have the willpower of a champ, could've banged 2 girls but had to resist the temptation...it was hard tho cos one of them was


im chatting bare sh1t...kool lads

 

[Clapsteel O'Neal]

:kanyeshrug: im not sure if i should put this here for the wolves but w.e some of them are banging i had to go to DC for some shyt for work and i was at a bar and i saw this fine ethiopian broad. i started chatting her up we really didnt get names at least we didnt pay attention until later. as we are about to exchange number she asks what my last name was i told her and she hit me with the she was like dop you remember me i was like nope nawww not at all. she was like im was your cousin. now at this point im lookin at my drink thinking of the dirty things i said and im just worried shes gonna tell me mom. she laughed her head off while i just stared at her with a smirk.

fuccing hell bruv

well at least you didnt find out after you sent her to the muay thai dikk to the face dojo *big narstie voice*

the same sh1t happened to my cousin one time, he was so glad he found out as soon as he did

 

[Clapsteel O'Neal]

@Grams oh my breh, to the girl you posted...shes a strong 5, she aiite...do your thing



whats the body saying btw?

 

[Roaden Polynice]

tried mandy for the first time 2nite lads (pure mdma cos my boy copped it from silk road on the deep web )...had only smoked weed and wasnt on doing the extra sh1te



























best most happy sociable experience 6hrs of my life brehs, no gas


man was stuck on mode the whole time and didnt sweat at all


its 8am and im going to bed, catch you all later brehs


oh and i proved to myself i have the willpower of a champ, could've banged 2 girls but had to resist the temptation...it was hard tho cos one of them was


im chatting bare sh1t...kool lads

Eh oft is to chat shyte. Sounds gr8 m8