Sports fandom is a peculiar portion of our existence. Being a sports fan is going to leave you heartbroken more often than not. No matter what league you follow or team you root for, odds are you may go your entire life without seeing your team win a championship. The vast majority of fans leave every season with a feeling of disappointment. It’s a self-serving masochism that is unavoidable with sports. Deep down, we like that pain. The feeling of heartbreak is why so many of us come back each year. You think next year will be different; this year is our year. When it finally is, the feeling of joy is so pure and so visceral that it makes up for all those other years.

Some people live and die with their teams. Some people only cheer when their team is winning. Some people go to games to see and be seen. And some people couldn’t care less about sports. I am one of those “live and die” fans. For many of us, being a sports fan is something of a birthright. Cheering for your local team is passed down from generation to generation.

Being an American, we are given a multitude of sports to pick and choose from. If you live in a big city (like Dallas, Texas, where I live) you have at least ten different professional sports teams that you can choose to root for. Most fans gravitate towards the major sports teams. I am a Dallas Cowboys fan, a Dallas Mavericks fan, a Texas Rangers fan and a Dallas Stars fan. I’m also a soccer fan.  Note I did not say I was a fan of FC Dallas, our MLS team. Despite their wonderful suburban stadium, the team never appealed to me, even as they made their run to the MLS Cup Final last season.

I think being an American has spoiled me when it comes to being a sports fan. We are afforded the ability to watch the best in any sport whenever we want. I am accustomed to watching sports at the highest level. I have been a soccer fan for much of my life. I played soccer as a youngster so soccer has always held a place in my heart. The MLS never appealed to me as I so often heard that the best soccer was played overseas.

My interest in soccer would manifest every few years in the run-up to the World Cup. I cheered on the US national team in every match. I still remember the excitement as I watched the US team beat Mexico in the 2002 World Cup at 2AM on a Monday morning. This past year, I became far more invested than in any past World Cup. Perhaps I was simply at a place in life where I could truly appreciate the appeal of “futbol”. I watched every friendly, even traveling to Philadelphia to watch the US team play against Turkey in their final friendly on US soil before leaving for South Africa. One of my fondest sports memories will always be watching the frantic finish of US-Algeria from the break room at my office. The true fans were packed around the TV and all shrieked in unison when Landon Donovan scored. The power of sports fandom had brought ten random souls together. I hugged people whose names I did not know. That’s what being a sports fan is truly all about…moments like that.

From that day on, I knew that soccer had me hooked. There was no going back for me. I wanted more. I needed more. I couldn’t wait four years to experience that kind of feeling again. A good friend of mine had fallen in love with Chelsea FC, partly by playing as them in FIFA on the PS3. He encouraged me to pick an EPL team and root them on as well.  He told me that the EPL was the best soccer league in the world and there were plenty of great teams to pick from. The process would be an interesting one for sure. How do you pick a new team to root for? Every other team I follow was a local team that I had cheered all my life.

I dove in headfirst. I read everything I could on the web, stumbling upon EPL Talk amongst others. I read transfer rumors and watched EPL highlight shows. I learned more about players who I’d seen only on the world stage.  I decided that I would choose a big club, probably one of the big four. It would simply be easier to follow a big four team from the States. Also, given the economic disparity from the top of the table to the bottom, I wanted to choose a team that had a chance of actually winning. That may be unfair, but it’s also pragmatic. My friend had chosen Chelsea, so they were out. I could not bring myself to root on the Red Devils either. As both a Texas Rangers and Dallas Stars fan, I know what it is like to have your team destroyed by Tom Hicks pocketbook, so Liverpool were ruled out too.

Arsenal was the last team left standing. I watched as many Arsenal highlights as I could and I fell in love with their intricate passing and stylish football. I learned the stories of Theo Walcott, Samir Nasri, Cesc Fabregas and the rest. Once the season began, I watched as many games as I could. I found myself living and dying with each Gooner game. It was a delightfully new sports experience. I haven’t had a new team to root for in a long time. It was glorious. I cursed Manuel Almunia and Lukasz Fabianski. I lauded the skills of Jack Wilshire and Robin van Persie (in those games when he was actually healthy). I mourned the FA Cup collapse and the Champions League dismissal by the mighty Barca just as I would have with any of my local teams. I’ve jumped in with both feet and couldn’t be happier about it. The EPL is a whole new world that I can’t wait to explore and learn more about with each passing day. The quality of play and artistry of the players in the EPL is remarkable. I was hooked and there’s really no going back. I can’t wait to see what Arsenal does this offseason and I will be glued to the TV for every game next season.

Being a sports fan is a wonderfully unique experience. It’s hard to explain it to anyone who isn’t a sports fan. They can’t understand why you care so much about millionaires playing a kid’s game. But it’s about so much more than that. It’s about sharing the experience with your friends or total strangers. It’s about cheering on a new bunch of players every year or wondering when your manager is going to spend money on reinforcements. There are highs and there are certainly lows. We live through all the lows to enjoy the highs. Those highs keep us coming back. They make us choose new teams to root for, just so we might be able to experience that pure joy that only sports can bring us. Being a fan will always be a struggle. There will be more good times than bad. For most of us, those good times will always bring us back and leave us wanting more.

Emmanuel Adebayor has been handed a £25,000 fine and a suspended 2-match ban today by the FA. The punishment relates to his excessive celebration following the goal he scored against Arsenal back on the 12th of September. For me, this represents yet another bungle from one of football’s governing bodies, similar to the ban Eduardo was given by UEFA for “simulation” which has since been rescinded on appeal.

I am not for a moment trying to defend what Adebayor did. As the player acknowledged immediately following the game, to deliberately goad the supporters of the team you are playing is irresponsible, undignified and just not what football is all about. Having been showered with abuse throughout the game, Adebayor was entitled to thoroughly enjoy his goal against Arsenal, it was after all the perfect response to his critics. However in running the full length of the pitch to taunt the Arsenal fans, he lowered himself to the level of the foul-mouthed fans, and merely fueled accusations that he does not always draw motivation from the right sources. Adebayor is not the first player to celebrate a goal in front of opposition fans, and he will certainly not be the last, but his actions were regrettable and he spoiled what could have been a wonderful day for him.

However, although I do not wish to see players willfully inciting unrest amongst fans, I am also keen to see consistency applied by football’s governing bodies. Otherwise, the laws which control the game is played will be eroded to the point of ineffectiveness. Mark Clattenburg gave Adebayor a yellow card for his goal celebration during the game. Therefore, the referee saw the event and administered the punishment he felt was necessary, and that should be the end of the story. In imposing a suspended 2-match ban, the FA are not only effectively saying that the referee got that decision wrong, but crucially are intervening in order to “restore order”.

In response to this, I return to the point I made in relation to the ban Eduardo initially received for diving against Celtic during a Champions League qualifier; reversing in-game refereeing decisions makes a mockery of every instance in the past where a referee’s punishment has been shown to be inadequate by TV evidence but the relevant governing body has claimed to be powerless. The significance is, in imposing a retrospective punishment, the FA have in Adebayor’s undermined the official who refereed the game.

In 2005, an awful challenge by Michal Essien was punished by referee Rob Styles with a yellow card. Essien is not a particularly dirty player, but his challenge on that occasion was very dangerous. Having reviewed video footage of the incident, Styles was keen to impose a red card instead of yellow, but FIFA actually intervened to prevent this from happening. There are plenty of other examples just like this one.

Manchester City are not set to appeal the decision, and are probably just happy enough to have Adebayor back in action at the weekend. And as long as the Man City striker keeps his nose clean until Christmas, he’ll only have to pay £25,000, which (crazily) is not a lot of money for him. But I am concerned by the FA’s decision, I think they have shown themselves to be weak in the face of a public outcry. I don’t think Adebayor can be held responsible for the behaviour of the fans who injured a steward in response to his celebration, and as much as footballers do get paid these days, I also think it is important to remember that they are human. Regardless of the rights and wrongs of his time at Arsenal and based purely on what went on during the game itself, had we been in his position ourselves, I’m pretty sure most of us would have felt compelled to give a little back. Therefore although what he did was wrong, for me the incident did not warrant the lack of consistency shown by the FA.

Much has been said about Arsenal striker Eduardo da Silva’s dive against Celtic during last Wednesday’s 2nd leg of the Champions League pre-qualifier. One split-second incident has led to questions about Michael Platini’s proposed system of 5 referees, TV technology, retrospective charges and just exactly what is it that constitutes a dive. Ultimately the player has received, as expected, a two-game ban. Is this wise or fair?

Arsene Wenger even claimed that Eduardo did not in fact dive at all suggesting that, still mindful of the horrific leg-break he suffered during a challenge from Birmingham’s Matthew Taylor, the forward was merely jumping to avoid injury. But although I was appalled by that incident and can fully imagine that Eduardo still thinks about it, that explanation still rings about as true for me as the time Gerard Houllier attempted to vindicate Robbie Fowler’s infamous by-line sniffing goal celebration by suggesting that the player was merely mimicking the routine which Rigobert Song had introduced from his time at Metz. On both occasions you have a French manager making a slight fool of themselves with a rather absurd explanation of their player’s bad behaviour.

You only have to watch the video below to see that Eduardo clearly dived. Why? Because no part of Artur Boruc’s body made contact with Eduardo, yet his legs flew up into the air almost exactly as they would have done otherwise, and down he went. A classic example of what they now call “Simulation”. Certain replays even show the viewer that Eduardo allowed himself a little smile once the penalty had been awarded (but irritatingly I can’t find any online). To make matters worse for anyone watching in indignant shock, the diminutive striker then picked himself up to coolly slot home the resulting penalty kick, giving his side a decisive advantage in the tie. Cue an angry lynch-mob from all over the football community. UEFA officials, pundits, armchair supporters and fans of Rugby everywhere were only too happy to have another excuse to moan about diving.

Fast-forward 3 days to Arsenal’s next game which was against Man Utd at Old Trafford. Early in the 2nd half, Wayne Rooney runs onto a pass into the box from midfield. In catching up with the ball, his body weight is being propelled to the by-line, and by the time he stops himself he will not be in a goal-scoring position. In short he is going nowhere, but unfortunately for Arsenal, Manuel Almunia rushes out anyway and tries to take the ball off his feet. Seeing this, Rooney boots the ball into touch and falls over, and a penalty is given. Why? Because Almunia’s arms touch Rooney’s leg before he hits the ground. Does anyone complain about the award of a penalty? Only Almunia, and it’s a fairly feeble complaint. Upon seeing TV replays, pundits, journos and fans up and down the country are satisfied that Rooney did well to win the penalty, and showed grit and determination to step up immediately and score it himself. The difference between the two incidents? Boruc got his hands out of the way and Almunia didn’t. Both Eduardo and Rooney did exactly the same thing, namely kick the ball away from the keeper and fall over, then step up and score a penalty. Rooney is an excellent footballer, Eduardo is a cheating cowardly disgrace who has behaved so badly that UEFA are forced to break the habit of a lifetime and take retrospective action based of video replays (more on that later).

Not for the first time, I’m irritated and embarrassed by the football community. Let’s get one thing straight, diving is cheating, and cheating cannot be condoned. But is it worse than shirt-pulling, deliberate handball, a cynical foul or even putting your arm up for a throw in when you know you got the last touch? As far as I am concerned, it most certainly is not. It’s just another example of cheating, so why is it so reviled? I think the problem is it’s not very manly, not very macho and definitely not in keeping with that British bulldog spirit. A proper British player would stay on his feet until it became physically impossible, wouldn’t they? Well firstly, no they wouldn’t. The two most talented players of their generation, Wayne Rooney and Steven Gerrard are actually prolific divers (as can be seen from a quick glance at Liverpool-Kop’s Football Cheats series), but nobody seems to highlight that fact apart from Arsenal fans. Secondly, on one occasion I can remember Scotland’s Kevin Gallacher staying on his feet and shooting straight at the ‘keeper having been fouled in the box (I wish I could remember the exact game, any ideas are very welcome). It was a tremendous show of sportsmanship, but it went down about as well as a rendition of Swing Low Sweet Chariot with any Scottish football supporter I spoke to afterwards. The fact is, most footballers will try and bend the rules and even cheat a little bit if they think they can get away with it, and diving is just one example of this. So rather than having what Arsene Wenger correctly describes as a witch-hunt, the only constructive thing to do is focus on looking at ways to limit the possibilities for cheating. Which brings me to UEFA’s brand new policy of retrospective punishment.

In announcing that Eduardo will serve a two-match ban for having been found guilty of simulation, UEFA have acted retrospectively. Ethan Armstrong recently put forward a decent argument for retrospective punishment in his article for EPL Talk, but I have to disagree. Ahead of last season’s Champions League final, Darren Fletcher appealed a red-card that was clearly shown to be wrongly awarded by television replays. At the time I argued on my blog Studs-Up that Fletcher’s ban ought to stand. Why? Because as soon as one refereeing decision is overturned via the use of television replays, suddenly UEFA will find themselves completely inundated with clubs appealing everything under the sun. Referees make half a dozen mistakes a game if we’re lucky, so if Eduardo pays the price for having been caught on camera, shouldn’t everyone else? I think in banning Eduardo for two matches, UEFA have just opened a massive can of worms. Secondly, why on earth give a player a two-match ban for an offence that would only receive a yellow-card if spotted by the referee? That just doesn’t make any sense at all. Either they have to change the rule so that diving is always punished with a red-card and a two-match ban, or they have to give Eduardo a retrospective yellow card. But to give him a two-match ban in near isolation is bizarre to the point of suspicion. I do hope Wenger’s suggestions of Scottish sympathies within UEFA are unfounded, and that UEFA are able to follow the precedent they have set consistently.

For me the challenge facing football’s governing bodies is to look at ways to curb any sort of cheating, and to strive for punishments that are proportional to the offence. Diving is hugely difficult to spot, and can lead to very serious consequences. In the video below Wayne Rooney dives to end Arsenal’s long unbeaten run, who knows how long they might have gone on otherwise? But is it dangerous? No. So therefore it ought to be punished in the same way that it and all other minor cheating offences are punished, with a yellow card. Much as we’d all like to see an end to the sort of cheating we saw last Wednesday, in trying to make an example of Eduardo, UEFA have inadvertently shot themselves in the foot.