Theodore Dalrymple is such a fine writer...

...that he can even make soccer sound interesting.

I tend to endorse his opinion of the game:

On the subject of football, I am a snob. I do not detest the game as such, for I accept that it can be played with skill and achieve a kind of beauty, but rather the excessive importance attached to it by millions and hundreds of millions of my fellow beings. Try as I might to expunge the thought from my mind that this enthusiasm is a manifestation of human stupidity, I cannot.