‘Will I be happier if I erase football from my life?’: how I went cold turkey and quit the beautiful game

W hat would you do with 25 hours of your life back, every single week? I wondered this after England lost in the men’s World Cup quarter-final in December last year. Through the fug of a festive hangover, memories of the previous evening flooded back: namely me, crying in the middle of a Christmas party, after Harry Kane skied an 84th-minute penalty against France.

Prior to this game, my football consumption had been spiralling out of control. Whether I was watching a match, reading about it, listening to podcasts, tinkering with my fantasy league team or endlessly WhatsApp chatting, some fag-packet maths revealed I spent roughly 25 hours a week preoccupied by football.

Football wasn’t always my primary focus – for example, when listening to podcasts while walking my dog. But it was still a lot. A full Earth rotation. On top of this, my almost 35 years as a Tottenham Hotspur and England fan – both perennial nearly teams – had left me with a sense that the beautiful game invariably made me sad.

I started to wonder whether I’d be happier if I erased football from my life and, as a bonus, got those 25 hours back. But to make such a detox worthwhile would require total, icy abstinence. So, no more games (at Spurs’ stadium or on television). No Match of the Day or Soccer Saturday. I’d have to cut off the flow of information from social media, and stop accessing the many football sources – news sites, podcasts, fantasy league – I slavishly wolfed down, morning to night.

This seemed daunting but was at least within my control. Trickier would be the hidden prompts: friends, family, WhatsApp groups, random people talking in the chip shop, TVs flickering in the corner of a pub. British people who give up drinking often remark