French football

Oddly, I was waking from peaceful dreams, in Ithaca, last week, and found that I had been turned into a zealous fan of European football, and since then have become warmly attached to the Fox Soccer Channel, on which I can watch numerous live and recorded matches from England, Italy, and throughout the world. I had been thinking that all I cared about was the New York Mets (since 1962), European cycling, and ocean sailing, so I had not expected that my enthusiasm would so quickly turn into that queer sort of dependence I have for the three other sports - if "sports" is what they are.
It then became what some people call incumbent upon me to establish a "side" with which I could park my aspirations for greatness and invest my remotest and least expressible strains of romantic energy. French, that would be; and a town in which I have spent some time. Paris, to me, means Metro exhaust and riding on the top level of RERs (I saw a baseball game being played in the Bois de Boulogne, but no football) and Fougeres, Tintineac, Carhaix, Villaines la Juhel, Mortagne au Perche, Belleme, and Nogent le Roi have teams too minor. Loudeac (my Onhava, my Ithaca) is too beautiful, just altogether too beautiful. Therefore Brest, a Second Division team with nice-looking boys with strange names, a town with exquisite bridges, and presently residing in a strong second place.
Now I feel safe.