Life as a football fan’s wife: I still don’t get offside, but I understand why it’s ‘the people’s game’

The FIFA World Cup has been in full swing since the first whistle on Jun 11, and many of us have been adjusting our work and sleep schedules to catch late-night and early-morning matches, organising watch parties with friends, and taking note of kick-off times.

I am, however, not talking about football fans. 

I’m talking about a breed in the football ecosystem that doesn’t get nearly as much attention: the wives of football fans.

Football has an incredibly massive fanbase. According to FIFA, roughly five billion people worldwide watched at least one 2022 World Cup match. Meanwhile, the English Premier League 2024-25 season saw a weekly global audience of 1.87 billion, according to Win Sports Online. 

No doubt, a good portion are women who can explain an offside, analyse a formation and tell you exactly how a player substitution changed the match.

This isn’t about them. 

This is about us, non-fans with little interest in the sport, who "married into" football and very quickly realised how much space it took up in our lives. 

We can now tell the position of our partner’s favourite team on the league table and confidently name at least three players from their favourite club (five, on a particularly good day).

This is one of the strange yet charming things about marriage: You learn the language that brings your spouse joy, then slowly figure out how to support it.

If that language is football, something else also happens.

You become unexpectedly competitive and even protective of your spouse’s team. You find yourself caring about a game that never really interested you. 

You may not understand every technical detail – I surely don’t – but you appreciate why so many people love it.

The cardinal rule when you