To start off, let me say that I love football. It's my job, my hobby and my passion.
I try not to miss a game when my favourite team is playing, and I've bored many people by harping on about a new signing, cracking goal or dubious decision. But, despite my 30-year love affair with the beautiful game, there are a lot of serious things about it that annoy me.
Sepp Blatter's dictatorial, never-ending reign of terror at Fifa is probably the worst thing about the sport, because so much of the rot starts at the top.
The way that money has become the most important aspect of football is another pet hate, and it beggars belief that players can earn as much as R3 million per week and still find things to complain about.
Racism, homophobia and football's appeals to the macho mainstream are also grievances for me, and they all relate to sport's place in the wider context of society.
I'm also not a fan of the way tribalism turns us vicious in how we support our favourite teams, and the insults readers dish out towards one another below the line in some articles on this very website are a case in point.
Football's stubborn insistence on sticking to tradition, especially with regards to technological aids to refereeing, also gets my back up. Every other sport is doing it, so why can't diski?
Those are all areas that I believe must change, if football is to carry on calling itself if 'the beautiful game', and if they do change it, I think it will signify some kind of positive evolution in humanity. But there are also a lot of not so serious things about football that annoy me and make me laugh in equal measure.
Take diving for instance. What is it about footballers that makes them act in such sneaky, conniving ways? And how many different versions of the dive can there actually be?
Luis Suarez goes down like he's been caught in the crossfire in Baghdad, Gareth Bale hurdles invisible pits filled with snakes, and Ashley Young often collapses as if in the midst of an epileptic fit.
The petty cheating knows no bounds. Just think of a player brushing past his opponent with innocuous contact, only to drop to the turf clutching his face as if a spiteful Russian ballerina has just splashed acid in his eyes.
A defender who has never hit a shot on target in his life can blaze a hopeful long-range thunderbolt miles over the bar, and still claim that the 'keeper finger-tipped it over.
A striker will get the last touch before the ball crossed the by-line, and almost burst into tears when the linesperson flags for a goal-kick and not a corner. The ball will go out for a throw at the half-way line, but by the time the player has finished his run-up, he's basically throwing it from the penalty spot.
Refs must feel like they're speaking to a bunch of 10-year-olds when they count ten yards for the defensive wall, and then watch as the wall encroaches every time.
Footballers know they're on TV, that the whole world can see them acting like morons, and claiming the ball is theirs when clearly it's not. But still they do it time and time again, and frankly, it's become hilarious.
Do you have any pet hates about football?
By Jared Chaitowitz
Follow Jared on Twitter: @JaredSLinter
