Football in Utania
Utanians are amongst the most passionate footballers in the world. They love the
game. As the saying goes, it's fed to them with their mother's milk.
Football's modern history goes back to the Ingallish colonists who came to
the Guwimthian Dependencies seeking to make their fortunes. With them, they brought
the game.
It soon became the most popular game amongst ethnic Utani, who already had
their own "foot-ball" game, as a means of forgetting the oppression they endured
at the hands of the occupation.
With this background, it is easy to understand why, at last conservative
estimate, there are some 18 million people who claim to have played football in the
past month, even if that only means in the street with their friends.
For schoolchildren, it is the only playground game.
For adults, it is the after-work workplace-based game against the workers
in the factory next door, or another nearby Utani farming community.
The Utanian Reserve Bank estimates that as much as Û2 billion is
spent on football in Utania, be that match attendance fees, attending games, club
regalia or club functions.
In cities, Clubs often fulfill the role that one's Utani community once did:
the bond of friendship, of common foes, of common goals. In rural communities, the
community IS the club and the club is the community. They are inextricably linked.
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The average game is a group of friends who take a football down to the local
park. Or farm workers returning to their village after a day's hard labour play a
relaxing game before settling down to the evening meal.
It is the children in the street, squealing with delight as they kick the
ball into the chalk-drawn goal marked on the wall at the end of the street.
It is the factory workers who take the ball outside at lunch, and play a
friendly match in the carpark against the metal-workers from next door.
These are the images of football in Utania. It is the game of Utania.
And the UFA will always be here to support, promote and play the game that
is part of the essence of Utania.
Click one of the menus at the top of this screen or below to find out more
about the culture of the game that is infused into every Utanian.
- For the history of the game in Utania, click here.
- For the ancestor organisation of the UFA, click here.
- For more on the culture of the game in Utania today, click here.
- And for the future aspirations of Utanian football, click here.
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