Dear all, I am a football mum through and through. I didn’t set out to be one – it just happened – but we’ve been in the game for over a decade now and I love it. I need to be a metre away from everyone else on the touchline; I’m right there with them, I feel it with them, I love the elegance on the pitch, I love the emotions, and I’m a true ultrafan.
If I miss a match, I suffer in secret and always keep a sneaky eye on the live ticker to see how our lads are getting on. An article my husband recently showed me stated that boys, when they’re young, simply have much more to do with adult women than with men.
There’s the nursery teacher, there’s the primary school teacher, and yes, in most families it’s unfortunately still the case that it’s usually Mum who works part-time and is therefore more present in everyday life than Dad. Football (or a similar sport in adolescence) would then suddenly provide reliable male role models. The coach, the referee, the teams in the age groups above…
Here, social classes and backgrounds intermingle; here, it’s all about team spirit and physical strength, about scouts and successes, about losses and injuries, about moving forward and getting back up when you’re down. And everything is so wonderfully clear and simple:
There is “good” and “evil”, the favourite team and the opponent. And the emotions on the sidelines are so wonderfully genuine, so unmasked and pure, so revealing at times, but also so amusing to observe (as long as it doesn’t involve violence – though that does happen, of course, but that’s not what I mean here).
I notice how the teams give each other no quarter on the pitch and then later shake hands, sometimes laugh together, perhaps even apologise, possibly knowing each other from the previous age group, where they played together before changing clubs.
I love it when our boys talk so animatedly about training over dinner, when they re-enact moves for us in the kitchen, when they get excited or high-five each other and talk about their lofty ambitions. When they question the coach’s decisions or have pulled off a particularly brilliant move.
I’ve spent plenty of time on football pitches with my boys; I was a fan of my big brother’s team, I was constantly in love with someone from the squad, but I often got bored too, so I’d take my unicycle to the ground to practise circus tricks. Three times I was even allowed to go on the team tour to Spain as the mascot. A 24-hour bus journey included.
Even today, and with my sons too, I still love the roughness, the authenticity, the hope, the action, the excitement. The camaraderie when someone needs help after a foul. We’ve – naturally – even held opponents’ hands when their parents weren’t there and we were waiting for the ambulance.
How many training sessions have I watched because it wasn’t worth driving home? The distances in the countryside are simply too far sometimes. I’d pack my running gear and use the time for my own exercise, treat myself to a new book and just read, or put my laptop on my lap and write and work.
With my children, but not in charge of them. That outside perspective was always simply the best thing when they were still younger. Watching them, but not being the one they turned to, not having to explain anything or discipline them – that was the coach’s job at that time.
The most wonderful relaxation and also the chance to feel incredibly proud. Just watching them. In a different context. In their passion. In their losses and victories. In their group, their team, with all the dynamics that entails.
Oh, but of course I too have swore along with the other mums and dads. When it was once again too windy and rainy and there was no shelter. When we had to turn up in the middle of nowhere an hour and a half before the match started.
Goodness, what corners of the Bergisches Land we got to know! How glad I always am of my sat-nav; my parents still had to consult maps to get to the most remote places…
Forever a football mum
But these are all memories I carry within me. Like how our twins competed so fiercely that we thought it would be a good idea to take one off the pitch and put him in goal. “Machine,” they shout when he keeps a clean sheet, “Octopus”! It was a good idea! Their talents are so well balanced.
How we recognise our own child – or in my case, both of my own – just by the way they walk as they warm up. From a distance. How we can tell from behind when they’re annoyed or happy. How we can tell from the cry when they fall whether it’s just a dive or a real injury. How we cook extra pasta before the match and have dinner a bit later on training days.
How many strange little plastic balls we’ve fished out of socks, how many airing sessions we’ve done for the smelly shin guards, how many shirts and thermal tops we’ve washed. How we’ve celebrated victories and consoled them after defeats. How we’ve discussed red cards and prevented injuries.
How we’ve seen teammates come and go, how at some point a club transfer was on the cards, how a refugee child from the team suddenly found a new family with a teammate. How our children grew up, how their voices deepened, their faces became more bearded, their gestures more masculine.
And how we then pause for a moment and realise that this isn’t just football, but childhood. Youth. Our children’s lives. Unfolding right before our eyes. And how we then realise just how special that was and is. The years spent on the sidelines, the conversations on the journeys there and back. The shared experience. How much life is in there. How much happiness.
And then we think: Thank you for all of that. Simply: THANK YOU for the intensity and the madness. For the gratitude and the eventful life. Because what is still part of everyday life now will later be our sweetest memory. I am convinced of that. Are you too?
