I was walking near to the ground of my local football team, Queen's Park Rangers this afternoon when I noticed that in the front window of a house nearby was a large banner cheerfully proclaiming "Chelsea - Premiership champions 2004-2005". Bold as you like, in the window of a house that many QPR supporters were going to walk past on the way to the game and on the way home from the game and also when just wandering by on non-match days.
It seemed an act of insane hubris to taunt other football fans in this way. It seems certain to me that at some point some drunk or disgruntled maniac fan will take exception to this banner and throw a brick through that window. Is it worth that risk to pointlessly crow about your own football team?
Even though I don't care about football, beyond following the rather pathetic and doomed attempts of York City to get out of the National Conference (preferably upwards, but more likely by escaping out of the bottom), I felt that I should be the one to do the breaking, just to teach the man (or woman, but let's face it, it was a man) inside a valuable lesson in humility. Or I could just graffiti his window with slogans explaining why it's not really fair to crow about your teams success when it is mainly down to your bosses having more money to buy loads of great players and that in that case QPR are actually a better team than Chelsea, though not as good as York who are obviously the best and also magic.
But I am a good man who only does a few bad crimes, so I decided to let the window be. For the moment. But if it's your house I would take that banned down now and be content with the fact that your team is ostensibly the best at the moment.... thanks to money.
