At the risk of breaching copyright (though I'm sure the authors/publishers wouldn't mind), I'll quote from Kathrine Switzer and Roger Robinson's book "26.2 Marathon Stories":
If you are losing faith in human nature, go and watch a marathon. Tap into the energy of tens of thousands who are out on the streets in the early morning with the sole purpose of urging on people they have never seen before and will likely never see again, yet whose effort they admire and want to encourage. At a marathon you hear none of the partisan tribal boasting and jeering that mar team sports. Onlookers may be watching for one runner - a husband, daughter, friend, grandmother, local hero, village mailman - and they will raise the decibels for any runner whose face or colours they recognise. But they support them all. They want every runner to win, which simply means to finish.
Few of the runners in a marathon are very good at running, but the crowds stay for hours and do their best to help. They are unfailingly generous, benevolent, encouraging, and cheerful, despite the total lack of spectator facilities and information. They have nowhere to sit, no shelter from the weather, no cheerleaders or entertainment. Yet - and it surely is amazing - the citizens of places as diverse as Los Angeles, New York and Soweto suddenly, one day a year, unite as a community of goodwill, peaceful, patient and positive, without the slightest formal organisation or incentive. They simply decide to go out to see the marathon, pick a spot, and squeeze randomly together along the edge of a gutter.
Given your involvement with that kind of world, is it any wonder that you're now finding football so disillusioning?
Frankly, even at my level of running, I'm now finding the tribal ferocity of team sports to be overwhelmingly disheartening (yes, SP, even cricket bothers me at times)
Focus on the running. Van Nistelroy and all his over-paid compatriots can take a running leap (metaphorically) into, er, somewhere else.
