Who won the World Cup in 2018?

No blog about my son would be complete without a blog post about football. This is actually the second post I write about his love for football, the first being Who plays for Millwall that used to play for Middlesbrough? All boys love football don’t they, supposedly, that is certainly the stereotype anyway and so to an outsider my son loving football is nothing unusual, nothing unusual at all which is probably why when I say this is one of his special interests that people just think oh he’s just a boy. But let me tell you one of his special interests is most definitely football. He lives and breathes it. He talks about it. He plays it all the time. He loves wearing football strips and I think if he could wear silky clothes all the time he would.

He always has a ball at his feet, and he loves playing goalkeepers or kicking a little ball around the house. He talks about football all the time – telling me statistics, talking about where his favourite team are in the league and what happens if they win the next game or lose the next game. He talks about players transferring between clubs and he talks about international players and their statistics over and over again. He has also modified his sensory seeking to fit with his special interest so he plays goalkeepers and jumps on the floor to catch the ball, he also plays a game called Foul or Dive where he puts a teddy on the floor and runs and falls over the teddy crashing to the floor and I then have to say whether he dived, or whether the teddy fouled him. It’s fascinating to watch him throw himself on the floor over and over again.

The other day he was struggling to go to school, he really wanted to get there and said so, but he was struggling to make himself. He was laid in bed and breathing in a particular way which suggested to me he was building up to it. When we finally got him out of bed and dressed, he asked if he could take a ball to school. Now I really wanted to say yes to this because I knew it would help him but I was unsure how school would react to this. He was currently taking a teddy in each day and this was allowed (although every day he did this I dreaded him picking the giant teddy – school are fine with a small rabbit or penguin but a giant teddy bear may not be accepted) and I am almost sure that taking in a mini football would cause issues in the classroom as everyone would like to play with it so I said he couldn’t take the ball in and explained why. And he said…

“But I just feel like I need a ball at my feet all the time.”

I am absolutely sure that it provides him with the proprioceptive input that he requires. It will calm and sooth him to kick a ball and that is why he does it but it would be improbable that school would agree to him having a ball at his feet all day. He did take the ball in the car with him and I made sure he played with it after school but he sadly didn’t take it to school. He has a cardboard box where he stores all his balls – his big football, his cloth ball, his Spiderman ball, his Messi ball attached to the rope, tennis balls of every colour and if for some reason they aren’t in the box we have to find them all before he can go to sleep. He can’t sleep until he knows his balls are safe….well actually he just can’t sleep but I know he needs to know all his balls are in the box.

Recently we were travelling home from one of his football training sessions and he asked me….

“Who won the World Cup in 2018?”

I actually had no idea but I knew he would know. He said it was France. Then asked me to have a guess so I guessed Spain and he said:

“I bet I am right.”

And I said….

“I know you will be right.”

Now I didn’t know for definite he was right but I would definitely not bet against him when it came to football knowledge. And when we got home and I checked he was indeed correct it was France.

It feels a bit like destiny that he’d love football as he is born in a World Cup year. In fact he was born right in the middle of a World Cup. He sees football not just as a game but as a world of numbers, stats, and patterns that make sense to him in a way that few things do. It’s not only the thrill of goals or favourite teams—it’s the scores, the stats, and the endless calculations. There’s a rhythm in football’s numbers that calms him, that he can latch onto, and his constant need to be around a ball keeps him grounded, regulating him in a way nothing else does.

Football, for him, is part passion and part sensory regulation. He needs that ball at his feet, that tactile feedback, and it’s as much about feeling steady as it is about playing. And while an outsider might see him as “just a boy who loves football,” we know there’s so much more to it…..a game, a world, and a grounding force, all rolled into one.

So, as he dives onto the floor to play his “Foul or Dive” game or rattles off another stat, I know he’s not just playing—he’s finding his balance. If there were a World Cup for passion, numbers, and sensory brilliance, he’d already have the trophy.