When I was at university we were talking about non-league football and I said I often watched my non-league side Billericay Town. My mate looked at me and said he didn't realise I was Irish. FFS.
And in equal numbers at Roma, if not more. In fact a huge part of Romanista identity is tied up in all that crap. And yes, much of it is fascist.
The irony here (or one of them) is that the original Romans used to be fairly inclusive with other races and cultures. That is one of the main reasons they've managed to hold on to a huge and heterogeneous empire for such a long time.
Football-wise, the first time I heard of Valerenga I assumed they were a Spanish club, and that Osasuna were based in Japan.
When Anorthosis Famagusta popped up in one of the European cups a couple of years ago, I thought they were from the southern suburbs of Milan... this on the basis of a business trip to my employer's Milan office, which was close to a station called Famagusta. I just assumed it was the name of the suburb.
I hail originally from a village called Upper Poppleton. Try saying that to a taxi driver after a post-match pint or 10.
Many, many years ago the GLW and I went on a pilgrimage to Upper Poppleton. We used to go often on the train from Leeds to Knaresbrough, and every time, she'd crack up when she saw the name Upper Poppleton on the timetable. So one day we decided to continue our journey and check it out.
Terrifying place. There was a *huge* garden centre where you could buy all the raw materials necessary to build a 30-foot-tall wicker man, a post office (we took a photo) and a village green that was like something out of Children of the Stones, only without the stones. Lots of creepy Boris Johnson lookalike kids capering about.
We wandered into one of the two pubs on the village green and it was like the scene in The Slaughtered Lamb in An American Werewolf in London. Absolute silence descended as we entered. We made our excuses and left and ran back to the relative cosmopolitanity of Knaresbrough.
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