Still not as weird as “wears-random-jersey-of-team-not-involved-in-game-he’s-attending guy.” Photo: Screenshot
Let’s preface this with two things right away: First, this is an American website so we will be (accurately) calling it “soccer” throughout the rest of this piece. It’s not football. Drop it. And second, soccer sucks.While we’re at it, I don’t love the metric system either. Points one and two are scientific facts but I’ll admit my take on the metric system is just a strong personal bias.
Speaking of personal bias…sports fans, amirite? As a serious sports nut myself (except for soccer because it’s terrible), I am the first to point out how ridiculous we are when it comes to our teams. It’s baked into the word — fanatic isn’t meant to describe one who responds with logic and reason. For example, if you had to explain the shenanigans of a European soccer match to an alien visitor, you’d have to cover A) the fact that soccer sucks, and then B) all the humans not participating in the contest have signed up to have their emotional state wildly affected by the performance of the humans wearing similar colored costumes. Riots may occur. Grown adults will cry…adults who didn’t participate in the contest itself but instead paid money to be there and scream for 90 minutes before their inevitable disappointment.
Now, if your “here’s-what-a-human-sports-fan-looks-like” testimonial started before a big matchup, you might have to expand on that odd behavior. Buffalo Bills fans going full top rope into folding tables. Why? Giant, costumed sausages sprinting the perimeter of American Family Field. Why? Or a bare-chested Olympic snowboarder flying down a dry ski slope waving a flare in the run-up to Switzerland’s Euro 2024 match against England.
Nicholas Huber was a member of the Swiss Olympic Team during the 2018 Winter Games, so it’s fair to assume he has some national pride. He sent it down a ski jump holding the flare like a torch and didn’t seem to flinch after face planting and nearly executing a picture-perfect scorpion. One-hundred percent more exciting than the matchup it preceded.
“Do these fanatic displays fuel their teams to victory?” your alien might ask.
In this case, it didn’t. The Swiss lost to the Brits in penalty kicks and spoiler alert, soccer is still pretty terrible. But Huber going full send on a dry hill is awesome.
A post shared by Nicolas Huber (@hubercop)
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