Football: The World’s Common Language

When I decided to travel, I thought long and hard about where I would go, what I would do, what I would miss. South East Asia is somewhere I have never been or experienced, and so I thought I’d go to experience the culture, people, and environment. When I stepped off the plane in Bangkok, I couldn’t have been further away from home: I couldn’t read the language, speak to the locals, understand the currency, find my way around. It was overwhelmingly exciting. Once I settled down and got into the traveling routine, I began to think about what I was missing, and one thing stood out: Football.

I follow football via multiple platforms while at home, which I now realise, I take completely for granted. In SE Asia, there is no match of the day, no 3pm Saturday kick-off, no pubs to watch the match in, no way of knowing the scores with any reliability. It’s frustrating. I know I should probably miss my family, or the food, but no, the magic in football that I feel at home is just not the same out here for me.

What I didn’t realise about traveling was the willingness for locals to try to communicate with you, to try and help you. In this part of the world, I have no hope understanding their signs, and I am struggling to learn the most basic phrases in their tongue. Despite these problems, I’ve already discovered two words that connects us: ‘football’ and ‘Liverpool’. It seems football really is the world’s common language.

I climbed into a taxi after my 14hr flight to Bangkok, and whilst on the freeway, I could see football everywhere. 30 metre murals of Manchester United advertising Pepsi, Everton advertising Chang, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City. Premier league teams and players are just everywhere. Strolling through market stalls and back streets is  eclectic cacophony of colour and merchandise. Much of it is fake, but the number of replica shirts shifted here is just extraordinary.

Traveling is a tiring business. I won’t complain too much, but when you’re stuck in a railway station in Ho Chi Minh City awaiting a sleeper train, a good mood is hard to come by. As I sat there twiddling my thumbs, I noticed an Asian chap wearing a Robbie Keane Liverpool shirt. I was intrigued, and couldn’t resist popping over to say hi, and ask him about supporting Liverpool. He spoke good, but not flawless English, and my Thai (he was a tour leader for another travelling group) is non-existent. That didn’t matter, I said I liked his shirt, and was from Liverpool, and we engaged in a passionate conversation about the reds. There was some bowing on his part after I revealed I had met his favourite LFC (ex) player Jamie Carragher, and a brief yet loud rendition of You’ll Never Walk Alone.

Since then, I have been looking at out for football, and Liverpool related things, wherever I want. I have been in a Dunkin’ Dounts (yes, SE Asia has Dunkin’ Donuts) which sell an LFC drizzle donut, and proudly advertise everywhere that they are the official coffee of Liverpool FC. I stood with a local man in a bar in Hanoi serenading our fellow drinkers with a pitch perfect (woefully out of tune) word perfect (his English wasn’t good enough to pronounce everything) rendition of You’ll Never Walk Alone. I hunted down the Kop Bar in Chiang Mai, Thailand with such enthusiasm that I think some of my tour friends were concerned. I just couldn’t resist having a drink, thousands of miles away from home, in a bar that would fit in anywhere in my home city.

I expected the culture shocks that would come with traveling and living abroad. I expected not to be able to understand the locals, or stomach the traditional cuisine. I even expected to find a few reds out here – they say you bump into a Scouser no matter where in the world you are – but what I didn’t expect was the instant connection with people over our mutual love. Liverpool has always been a huge part of my life, from watching, to supporting, to academic writing; it’s so interesting to see the research from dissertation in real-life. Liverpool fans really are everywhere, and really are as passionate out here as they are at home.

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