Football Withdrawal Syndrome
Now that the World Cup is over and the greatest sporting show on Earth has finally come to an end, a lot of intense football fans are experiencing an interesting disorder. This disorder is commonly known as Football Withdrawal Syndrome or FWS. It is a little tongue in cheek way of saying that people will have nothing to do now that the football has ended. This little disorder is not limited to the World Cup though, it can also relate to the end of football seasons as well.
This condition which is not to be taken very seriously can be defined as the mental process a football fan goes through when they find out that the football is finally over. A lot of fanatical football fans do not really know what to do with themselves once the football season is over. They have had it very good for a while because right after the football season ended in the UK, the World Cup started. Even though the England team had a disappointing run it was still football and for the diehard fan it was all about being able to sit on their couch every night watching the game they loved.
But now the tournament is over and people have to figure out how to get back into their daily routine. Bosses frequently understood when employees would saunter into work two hours late in the mornings and a lot of socialising was done after work watching games in the pub. Now that is all over and people have to get back to work, which is not easy. Clinical psychologists even say that football fans find it very hard to get back into a routine because the football season or month long World Cup was such a pleasurable distraction that they do not want to get back to their boring routines. The World Cup and football seasons made everything in people’s lives seem better and easier. Some young men even found it easier to talk to women during the Cup because they instantly had something in common with a girl who was also watching a match in a pub. They will have to go back to their regular so-so flirting tactics of the past.
Is there a cure to this debilitating condition? There will be very soon because the Barclay’s Premier League will start in a month’s time and ardent football fans can look forward to that. With games on every weekend, football fans can work hard during the week and relax and watch the games on the weekend. FIFA did something very smart to try and ward off the dreaded symptoms of FWS by spacing out the semi-finals and the final and giving fans a few days gap in between so they could try and get their lives back in some sort of a routine so it would make the transition back to normal football free life easier. After the complete onslaught of matches that went on during the first round, the round of 16 and the quarterfinals, it was good for people to get some rest from the football and so they could peel themselves off the couch and do some normal stuff like feed their kids, or take the dog for a walk.
A few people will try to pass the time by watching other sports. The problem was that during the same time as the FIFA World Cup, Wimbledon was on, and, the British Grand Prix was the same day as the final. Now it seems there is nothing good on until the next F1 race or the Premier League starts. So in the meantime fans have started to watch beach soccer and other forms of the game. They have even started playing football games on their videogame consoles more now and also accessing YouTube to relive the goals of the tournament. Let’s hope they do not go off the deep end until they can start watching the Premier League in a months’ time, and this year's Premier League is all set to be one of the best in recent memory. With so many new players coming into the league and so many talented players willing to perform again, it should be good.
Lets hope people are not too affected by FWS this year, because the final of the World Cup was so pitiful that it was probably not that hard to get over. The fanatical football junkies out there will be able to survive until the start of the Premier League next month, so they should all be alright. For the international football fans, they will have to survive two years until the European Championships in 2012.
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