Allez Nice

The Nice Football Strip

Now Guy does not like football at all. At school a few years ago, the teacher obviously lost patience with Guy’s lack of interest in the game and sent him off. It was Guy’s first and last involvement with 'the wonderful game', at least for a while.

A few years back, in 2005 to be precise, my mate Steve was over at the same time as the European Super Cup was being played in Monaco. It was Liverpool versus Moscow and Guy went along with Steve and thoroughly enjoyed the experience, standing as he was with the boisterous and noisy Liverpool supporters.

And that was it. Nothing. No further interest, until Saturday morning when Guy said he was going to the Nice versus Marseille football match on the Sunday evening. I thought maybe it was a scam to get even more money out of me and to go out with a girl, but no, he was going with a bunch of his mates and I dropped him in Vence in pouring rain and off he went.

Nice Stadium - The Only Covered Bit !

Now Nice and Marseille is a sort of local derby down here and the Marseille fans are not the nicest people on earth when their team is not doing well but if they won Sunday’s game they would go top of the league whilst good old Nice is down in the lower reaches of the table. It was a classic David versus Goliath story with the added attraction of the local rivalry. 

Kitty was also out on Sunday afternoon and with J in the deepest recesses of the African jungle, I had the house to myself and so it became a football day. I had one game on the TV and I managed to get the Nice game on my PC but as usual, whilst the Nice game was quite good, it wasn’t as interesting as the fan’s forum which sits alongside the screen showing the game and allows fans to make comments about the match they’re watching.

Fan’s Forums are a hoot. The ones I have on when I’m watching Rangers on the PC are full of hatred, invective, swear words and frequent references to the Pope. Every second comment has to be erased by the ‘moderator’, who, by his or her actions, then becomes the target, a figure of hatred, not the other team and the fans then switch their attack. It’s hysterical and not to be taken too seriously.

The Nice forum however was quite different. It was all so good natured with lots of ‘allez Nice’ and ‘allez OM’ (Olympic Marseille) going on. At one stage when one of the players skied a ball well over the bar someone said ‘he’s just killed a bird’. I couldn’t believe it. And then a word I’d never seen before came up and I assumed it was a swear word but no, it turned out to be the word for striker or attacker! And to top it all, someone obviously watching the players skidding about on the soaking wet grass, asked if it always rained in Nice. How sweet!

Getting back to the game itself though, and as I hinted before, it rained from start to finish and as Nice’s council owned stadium is an utter dump, I assumed poor Guy with his €13 ticket would be standing in the pouring rain (which he was) but also assumed that with the game tied at nil-nil and neither side showing any real desire to be the winners, he would leave early (he didn't).

Nice Celebrate Their Win

And guess what happened? Lowly Nice scored with the last kick of the game to send Marseille back along the coast with their tails between their legs.

Allez Nice. Allez Nice.