The countdown is on to the first whistle of the 2014 World Cup in Brazil and although you may not be a player or a fan with match tickets, you still have to take steps to be match-ready; this is serious business.
As fans, we all have a part to play in supporting our teams.
Have you booked time off work to watch the big game? Have you bought a big TV? Have you stocked the fridge with cans, chopped up oranges for an authentic half-time snack and cleaned and prepped the BBQ for the post-match analysis?
These are all very reasonable, practical steps to let your team (and your neighbours) know that you care.
But there’s more.
According to snack giant, Pringles, taking steps to make your team lucky is just as important as doing all that practical stuff.
In a survey of 2000 match fans quizzed by One Poll, 50% admitted to having special match day rituals that they hoped would bring their team luck.
Of those who took part in the survey:
– 23% admitted to wearing a team strip or favourite t-shirt
– 12% admitted to wearing a particular pair of ‘lucky’ pants
– 45% confessed to only drinking from a special pint glass for the duration of the match
– 13% of those asked, said that if a game goes to penalties they will watch (squinting and praying) from behind their sofa
It may sound mad but just like fans, players have their own rituals for luck too.
Apparently Steven Gerrard, Liverpool and England captain, likes to touch the Anfield sign on his way out onto the pitch and wears a pair of lucky boots. Leighton Baines isn’t worried about the boots, but has a ritual of retying his laces before stepping onto the pitch.
To give our team a boost, Pringles have built a giant lucky boot from 1500 Pringles tubes which is currently on tour around the UK with fans being invited to rub it for luck. It was even blessed by Reverend Mark Thomas outside Wembley before the match against Peru.
Maybe it helped? The team did sail comfortably to a 3-0 victory.
However, the biggest statistic revealed by the Pringles survey showed that a whopping 50% of fans commit to sitting in the same seat and maybe this is the problem?
Have those people been sitting in the same lucky seat since 1966?
It’s time for a new kind of luck and for that, there’s nothing better than a bean bag with your team’s national flag on it.
For reasons of luck and practicality, every match fan can benefit from a bean bag.
– If you host a World Cup party at your place, it gives you more seating
– If you can’t find a babysitter or have partner who likes to chat, you make your bean bag a seat of silence
– If a match does goes to penalties, you can hop on your bean bag to hide behind the sofa in comfort
– If your team loses, you have a comfy place to gently weep
British manufacturer, Greatbeanbags.com are showing their support for the World Cup with flag-patterned bean bags. Get your lucky shirt, lucky pants and lucky pint glass settled on a lucky bean bag and maybe, we might just do it this time. Fingers crossed.
