You don’t get to choose your football team.

It’s the start of the V-League football season today.

I started watching Hanoi Hoa Phat FC because their stadium was near the KOTO restaurant where I worked.

The stadium is open and yellow and you sit on a concrete terrace. It’s nice. It’s how a football ground in a hot country should be.

The crowd numbers only a couple of hundred and, when I last went, the classic formation was a big goalkeeper (African or South American) and a big centre forward (again African or South American). In between those two were nine much smaller Vietnamese.

It dawned on us fairly early on that we had picked a dud team. Later, when they got relegated, our suspicions were confirmed.

But that’s the trouble with football. Unless you’re a Johnny-come-lately-satellite-TV-viewing-glory-hunting-Man U-fan-in-Brighton you didn’t choose your team. It chose you.

It has been suggested that perhaps we switch and support another side.

No, my mate said, we can go and watch another team, but we can never support them.

Wise words.

Phat and proud.