I’ve never understood why football means so much to me.
Playing, yes, makes sense. It’s fun and keeps you fit.
Watching and supporting twenty-two grown men kick a ball around? There is art, some beauty, lots of unpleasantness. There are stories, lots of stories. There is emotion. Yes, there is also community, a common currency for conversation. But all in all, it delivers little of real value and in fact perhaps takes something away with the passion and energy it consumes.
Some people feel an affinity for a local team. Many more support the biggest clubs, including myself. I don’t know why.
I know it’s pointless, I just can’t stop myself.
musings of an untrained mind 
Isn’t much of life like football. An arbitrary collective narrative designed to make sense of our emotional responses to essentially random acts of the world.
Ha. You may have hit a existential nail on the head there. Time to activate cognitive dissonance and pretend that’s not true!
Perhaps football is so appealing as it is a mirror on life itself:
There are a few that can win. The rich get richer. The poor struggle. The rich take what they want from the poor. The ethos of the system becomes vacuous. The whole thing is ridiculously religious and sectarian.
The whole thing is a spectacle that distracts our attention from what really matters.
Yet I will keep cheering, keep reading football news and consuming podcasts like a beast. Why oh why.