Football is still mostly a mystery to me, but I occasionally find matches on TV and leave them on so I can soak it up via osmosis. This weekend, the Champions League final was on TV, and we watched Bayern Munich - the only German team I have heard of - play another German team. At one point I recognised the name Schweinsteiger but that’s about as far as it went.

Back in August, I wrote about my new enthusiasm for being a football fan, after my first visit to a match earlier in the year. At the end of summer, I was all excited about following along at home - checking in with the app, catching up with Match of the Day, and trying to keep up with the scores. I figured now was as good a time as any to update how it’s going being an Aston Villa fan.

You’ll remember that earlier in the year I went to my first (and probably only) football match, and somehow became an Aston Villa fan. I vaguely followed what they were doing for a few weeks, and then sort of lost touch until the season ended. Mr C and I watched the occasional Match of the Day update, but even then only if we happened to be in the right place at the right time - it’s not allowed on the iPlayer.

A couple of weekends ago, Premier League football had one of it’s best weekends. Record-breaking numbers of goals were scored, matches with eight goals altogether, penalties, men sent off, that kind of thing. Mr C and I figured that although our taste for football is still vague, we didn’t want to miss the highlights of an epic day. So, we sat and we watched Match of the Day, and it was good.

As with most of my Life List items, if you’d told me I would be doing them a year ago, I would have thought you were crazy. On Saturday evening, I found myself in a stadium with more than 37,000 other people, cheering on Aston Villa as they scored the winning goal. Well, they might not all have been cheering for Villa, but you get what I’m saying. A football match.

Ah, so that’s it, it’s all over. Done and dusted. The World Cup 2010 is complete. Wait a minute… that was it? I am left feeling slightly confused and bemused by the whole World Cup thing. The first two weeks were brilliant. Football overload. Matches starting all over the place, lots of great teams and fun player names to laugh over. There were barely any tactics, because a draw was okay.

Credit: jikatu/Flickr I was skeptical about watching the 2010 World Cup There was no doubt that England would mess the whole thing up For five long weeks, flags everywhere. Football’s all that matters Inevitably our heroes left the nation’s hopes in tatters The countries kept on playing though, while our boys were sent packing The quality of game increased, goals no longer lacking And there he was, a shining light, a fabulous right foot

The most read item on the BBC as I type this is stunning. TV star Declan Donnelly was amongst hundreds of football fans in London who missed England’s all-important World Cup goal after a power cut. “We were watching the game in a pub in Kew,” Donnelly told the BBC news website. “One minute before the goal, the power went.” Hey, you know what? I didn’t get to see any of the match.

I tried to avoid it for as long as possible, but eventually I had to write today’s World Cup post over on Sidepodcast. I have watched more of the games than I imagined I would, and enjoyed even more of them. A lot of that has to do with the live comments, as it’s fair to say I have a lot to learn! On that subject, I wanted to note down some of the things I have picked up after just a few days of international football.

I’m afraid I’m going to be one of those rather annoying people who only pays attention to football when the World Cup is on. Come on England and all that. Thankfully, I wouldn’t dream of being one of those annoying people that puts flags on their cars, so I think the two balance each other out quite nicely. I know very little about football. Really, really little. I used to “support” Manchester United when I was too young to know any better.