Q1. Tell us about Jurgen Klopp.
A) German guy. Great beard and glasses.
B) Something of a tactical messiah. I’d love to join the ‘Yellow Wall’ of Borussia Dortmund one day.
C) A sell-out, frankly. I didn’t mind his early stuff, but I’m more of an Abdelaziz Abbes man now – his work at Chabab Riadhi Baladiyat Ain Fakroun in the Algerian P2 is pioneering.
Q2. Which formation do you prefer?
A) 4-4-2 and 3-5-2 work well, don’t they?
B) Marcelo Bielsa’s 3-3-2-2 and 3-3-1-3 line-ups are innovative, and I enjoy a bit of 4-2-3-1 gegenpressing on occasion.
C) Rwanda’s fluid 3-1-4-2 bewitches, but I prefer a pivoting 4-1-2-1-1-1 with an unoquartista and a dosquartista playing behind a trequartista. I’ve explained its versatile majesty on my blog – Refurbishing Lobanovsky’s Sideboard – but for some reason Johan Cruyff has blocked me on Twitter.
Q3. What clothes are you wearing?
A) Shoes, jeans, T-shirt.
B) Adidas Gerd Muller limited edition trainers, Peru ’78 replica tracksuit from Toffs.
C) Clachnacuddin (Highland League) socks, The Caribous of Colorado (defunct NASL side) long-johns, a striped Perseka Kaimana of Indonesia away shirt (with Kristian Kasi’s name on the back) and the Irish linen suit worn by Arthur Friedenreich on his deathbed (off eBay, never washed).
Q4. What are your top football books?
A) Player biogs for me. Frank Lampard’s Frankie’s Magic Football for the kids.
B) The Glory Game by Hunter Davies, The Hand of God by Jimmy Burns and an anthology of The End fanzine.
C) Football in Sun and Shadow by Eduardo Galeano (in original Spanish), Rudi Gutendorf’s epic I Am A Colourful Dog and unpublished transcripts of poet Gil Scott-Heron jazz-scatting about his dad’s Celtic career.
Q5. What are your other interests away from football?
A) Playing football, walking the dog, watching Vines.
B) Real ale, TV box-sets, cookery.
C) Magic: The Gathering, the music of Van der Graaf Generator, writing weekly diatribes to FourFourTwo about fundamental tactical misunderstandings in the magazine that would NOT occur on Refurbishing Lobanovsky’s Sideboard.
Q6. The greatest footballers of all time are...
A) Pele, Maradona and Bobby Moore.
B) Garrincha, Zinedine Zidane and Lev Yashin.
C) Josef Bican, Paulino Alcantara and Fernando Peyroteo. JUST LOOK AT THE STATS, IMBECILES.
Q7. Your favourite football television shows are...
A) Match of the Day, Soccer Saturday and Football Focus.
B) The European Football Show on BT Sport, Revista de la Liga and Norway’s Golden Goal – it’s very amusing.
C) I’m currently learning Cymraeg in order to watch a pile of VHS tapes of cult Welsh 1980s European round-up Sgorio...
Q8. Who did you support at the Brazil World Cup this summer?
A) C’MON ENGLAND! But once we got knocked out, I had to admire the Germans for their great play.
B) I’m still fuming about Burkina Faso being unfairly denied a place in the tournament. But I was cheering on the Bosnians while wearing my 2010 North Korea replica top.
C) I spent the entire tournament up a tree outside Iran’s Guarulhos training base with my birdwatching binoculars, live-tweeting scouting reports on Andranik Teymourian and Alireza Jahanbakhsh’s form. I picked up an Associacao Desportiva Guarulhos pin badge while I was in Brazil... did I tell you about how they’re doing in the Paulista Segunda this year?
The results...
Mainly As
You’re a reasonably balanced human being. You’re not a football hipster, and you’d probably like to punch one should they start droning on about double pivots while you’re watching Sky Sports News. But there’s a whole world of fun you’re missing out on, so why not expand your horizons? May we suggest FFT’s Planet Football to ease you in...
Mainly Bs
You’re a bit of a hipster, with an appreciation of the game beyond just yelling at club and country. You delight in the wonderful melting pot that is world football, enjoy a Panini sticker album, and suck up all the information you can. But beware slipping into fully-fledged geekdom publicly. It might be best to keep it behind closed doors and on web forums.
Mainly Cs
You are a bonafide hipster, and what’s wrong with that? It’s not as if you’re running an underground bear-baiting ring, involved in human trafficking, or watching rugby. You may care to check your head on occasion, however. Does your mum really need to hear your lecture about how Leigh Richmond Roose revolutionised goalkeeping in the 1900s?
