I went for a stroll before the match around Sunday tea time in search of likeminded football supporters. You can sense them from a mile off. I won’t be the first to have said it but, no matter what country, what level of what pyramid, football fans have a certain urgency about them on a matchday. Indeed, attending my first Sunday match at Anger’s Raymond Kopa, I realised just how blatant this walk is. Among the church goers and the market stragglers were others, like me, strolling to the match with two hours spare, yet at an inexplicable rhythm which resembled more to that of one of Napoleon’s soldiers. I knew I was in the right place. I sipped my can of Orangina at a measured pace and watched my fellow match goers walk their march to the Raymond Kopa, thinking myself invisible. But I was fooling nobody. My sipping was just about as nonchalant as that of a striker taking pre-match shots at the substitute goalkeeper: casual, sure. But focussed, ready.
I had time to spare before I met up with the others, so I did the marching walk that everyone else was doing through the pleasant little park in view of the ground. On the modest pitch which took up most of the green, a few lads kick a ball about. The goalkeeper makes a good save yet it’s one he doesn’t appear to be fond of. He wants to be taking the shots; he’s only in there ‘cos he’s tall. He must have the patience of a saint; they were doing full blown drills in front of him: dribbling down the wing, cutting inside but then not taking the shot due to the interception of an invisible defender. He’s got a future in mime, I tell myself. Then he skies the rebound (off of the invisible full back). Yep, definitely a career in mime.
In the park, I see families, dogs, prams. Surely this is all a show, all an illusion of divine family organisation, this unfeasible ability to just…be. Of course they’ll all be in the terrace come 17.15, baby swung in the air in the absence of a black and white scarf, or perhaps the baby will be wearing it? Pram thrown at the opposition goalkeeper, dog content with a hotdog and a scrap with a Metz supporting Dachshund. I comfort myself with these images, for the alternative is unsettling. I no longer blame my parents’ cat for wishing the family to all be in the same room all of the time because I realise that football supporters, in their own way, have the exact same mindset. One foot in the wrong direction is one too many. There is nothing else anybody could or should possibly be doing. We should all be going to the football. Where are your scarves and where is your Orangina?
An hour or so later, I take the same walk back to the ground. Outside, there’s the deafening sound of stomping feet on the steel kop. The French, at the football, will do anything but clap. I imagine that they’d kiss the substitute on both cheeks if they could but ten thousand Angevines doing that would be entirely unpractical so the only viable solution is aggressive feet stomping. The problem is that when you’re a football fan, you start to think that everything is because of football. I wonder whether the stomping business is the reason they’re all so thin here. A lady asks me for my ticket and I react clumsily, distracted by my unseizing cultural reflections.
Angers are a decent side and a decent set up all in all. They’re punching above their weight in league 1 (although they’ve had a few stints up there since their formation in 1919) and this season they’re uncomfortably comfortably mid table. They welcome Metz, who haven’t won for four games and sit rock bottom of France’s top division. Yet the first ten minutes see chances for both sides; if Metz score first, we could have a game on our hands. That’s until the big stupid television gets involved and a Metz player is sent off for what looks to be a decent challenge. High? Probably. A sending off? I think most reasonable football fans would question whether it was even a foul. But we’re far from reasonable in the tribune Coubertin so we all go absolutely mental. Tonnes of stomping. I say we: VAR is actually the only thing that will effectively regulate my treasonous ability to pretend to support another football club just because I happen to be living in the town. It’s an awful system wherever it’s used but in Ligue 1 they seem to use it about half an hour after the incident concerned took place and then take another half an hour to review it. “I wish that the French took as independent a view on VAR as they tend to on geopolitical matters of importance”, I think, and promptly decide to jump up and down on the rattling Pays de la Loire steel. Stomping? I can stomp alright. They’ll never know.
The red card doesn’t help Angers. Metz, predictably, go very defensive and Angers are overcomplicating things. After their best spell yet, they go in front in the 25th minute. Metz must sense that the SCO aren’t at their best, because they come out with renewed vigour in the second half. A couple of gilt edged opportunities are missed and Angers, relieved, get all three points. Whether it was always going to be a tough day for Angers or that it was the unmerited red card which changed the mindset of the Angevins, I am not sure, but Metz look disappointed at full time.
We could’ve had a game on our hands. Anyway, what did I say about uncomfortably comfortably mid table?
CoupFrank 