At 4:30 Saturday morning, our dog Mardy Bird was scratching himself silly and keeping my wife awake.
So I took one for the team.
Mardy and I got out of bed and moved to the living room, allowing my wife another few hours of sleep. This act of considerable marital generosity was made easier by the fact that Manchester United was about to kick off its Premier League season against newly promoted Hull City.
The problem with following English soccer from the West Coast is that England is eight hours ahead. A perfectly civilized lunchtime kickoff over there can require getting up at 4:30 in the morning over here.
There are very few things worth doing at 4:30 in the morning. I’m beginning to suspect watching Manchester United isn’t one of them.
Mardy curled up next to me and promptly fell asleep. His itching stopped.
Mine was just getting started.
Hull scored twice in the first half and beat United 2-0, its first league victory over Manchester United since 1974.
I’ve been a Manchester United supporter since the 1993-94 season, for reasons I’ll save for another day. But somewhere over those three decades, soccer quietly became the sport I enjoy more than any other.
This summer’s World Cup pushed me completely over the edge. For weeks there was soccer every day, sometimes several times a day. Then the World Cup ended and the Premier League arrived almost immediately afterward.
Fine by me.
I’d also made the questionable decision to start playing Fantasy Premier League for the first time.
A friend had been “encouraging” me to play, and I finally gave in. I figured I had some transferable skills. I’ve played fantasy American tackle football for decades, with moderate success at best.
I’ve drafted teams. Studied injury reports. Worked waiver wires. Watched somebody’s third-string running back score three touchdowns on Monday night and beat me by 1.7 points.
I know how fantasy football works.
I did not know how this fantasy football works.
In the NFL version, players are drafted. If I have somebody, you don’t. Fantasy Premier League gives everyone £100 million in imaginary money and lets us shop from essentially the same inventory.
You can have Haaland. I can have Haaland. Half the league can have Haaland.
I found this a little hinky at first. Where’s the satisfaction in stealing somebody else’s player one pick before they can draft him?
But I’m coming around.
Instead of a draft, the trick is figuring out where to spend your money, who to start, who to leave on the bench and which player to name captain for double points. There are also Wildcards, Free Hits, Bench Boosts and Triple Captains, which sound like things Dakota-the-budtender might offer me at the neighborhood pot shop.
I spent the week studying all of this. I read newsletters, looked at projections, studied fixtures and asked for advice.
By Friday, I thought I had a pretty good team.
I did not.
My first problem was allowing my affection for Manchester United to influence my judgment. I started three United players against Hull.
They combined for five points.
Sitting on my bench were two Hull players, Nobel Mendy and Regan Slater.
Mendy scored Hull’s second goal.
Slater assisted him.
They combined for 21 fantasy points.
On my bench.
So there I was before sunrise, watching three Manchester United players wreck my fantasy team while two Hull players wrecked Manchester United—and the Hull players weren’t even helping me because I’d benched them.
It’s difficult to arrange that much failure simultaneously.
I’d somehow built a portfolio that lost money whether the market went up or down.
The rest of the weekend wasn’t much better.
I made Erling Haaland my captain, meaning his points counted double.
He scored two.
Twice two, I learned, is still four.
João Pedro, whom I did not captain, scored 11.
Much of the rest of my starting lineup produced two points apiece.
Two.
Two.
Two.
In Fantasy Premier League, two points appears to mean the player found the stadium and remained conscious for most of the match.
I finished the weekend with 39 points.
The worldwide average was 48.
So I wasn’t just below average.
I was comfortably below average.
In my 12-team league, I was tied for ninth.
The high score for the week was 131.
It’s generally considered a bad sign when the leader has more than three times as many points as you.
And yet I loved the whole weekend.
That’s probably the larger problem.
I watched matches involving teams I don’t particularly care about. I suddenly cared about clean sheets. I found myself rooting for individual players while hoping their teams lost. By Sunday I was checking scores and doing arithmetic involving Englishmen I’d barely heard of a month ago.
Fantasy had given me another reason to watch a sport that was already taking up an increasing amount of real estate in my life.
Maybe that’s why soccer has gradually moved to the top of my list.
The game moves. The clock runs. There aren’t commercial breaks every few minutes so somebody can sell me a pickup truck or medication for a condition I didn’t know existed. Teams get promoted. Teams get relegated. Supporters don’t just cheer. They compose elaborate musical tributes to their heroes and wicked personal insults to the other side. And occasionally a club that hasn’t beaten Manchester United in a league match since Richard Nixon was president gets its chance.
Apparently at 4:30 in the morning.
Next weekend I’ll make a transfer or two. I’ll rethink my captain. And I’ll pay considerably more attention to who’s sitting on my bench.
Fortunately, Manchester United doesn’t play until 8:30 Sunday morning.
That’s Pacific Daylight Time, which means I get to sleep in.
Assuming Mardy agrees.