LilMaibe wrote:Well, H8, since you ask:
It could be virtually everything.
Just something a number of people can obsess over.
And as there is little to no actual footballplaying going on in the book and the rules are a jumbled mess of various incarnations of the game throughtout time, why should it matter if it weren't football but just a random made-up game.
It is the framing for the fan-scene-substory, so 'inventing' a new sport would/could have likely been easier all together. It wouldn't even, as said, have needed to be a sport.
Just something a number people can obsess over.
Association football is the most popular game in Europe, Latin and South America and Africa. Any other game wouldn't have the impact.
And the rules of the match as played at the end of the book are pretty much the modern FIFA rules.