Every four years when the World Cup hits, everyone and their grandmother becomes a football fan. Everyone is a pundit to some degree because being completely oblivious about it will make those around you treat you like a social outcast. But there are different kinds of these fans as well.
The League Fan:
These are usually the fans that closely follow one or more football leagues throughout the season and are usually die-hard fans of a particular club (or more from the other leagues). They'd rather miss their own weddings than miss a game.
They will spend the majority of their waking hours discussing the various nuances of the handball rule or talk about the differences between a 4-3-3 formation and the 4-3-2-1. They will tell you how Neymar's hairstyle helps with his aerodynamics of the amazing goals.
The Once Every Four Years Fan:
Every four years, we have people painting their houses yellow and green, or white and blue; flags being waved high, the red and green often forgotten or left to collect dust. It is the time to show your colours.
The entire country gets divided into two -- Brazil or Argentina. It forges new bonds, and breaks old ones. These are the fans who you did not know watched a second of football before today, but are suddenly the biggest Argentina fans around. Often times, they are the most passionate about the competition; more than the regular football enthusiasts.
The Loyal, Albeit Irregular Fan:
Now, these are the fans who have been watching football for a while. Watching football with them can be fun. You probably won't be able to tell this type right away. They might seem like the generic Brazil or Argentina supporter but you will find they know stuff about the game that will amaze you. He'll tell you about that incident with Beckenbauer that will make you laugh or about the Maradona goal that left him speechless.
The Braggart:
This type has been supporting Team X for 182857918235 years. Well no, I am exaggerating. But they have certainly been supporting them ever since they first opened their eyes and saw a circular shaped object. The first words out of their mouth were, "Fußball-Club Bayern München."
Reading up random trivia from Wikipedia is among their favourite pastimes.
The Shallow Fangirl:
There are the true female football fans who are in it for the game. Then there's a different breed of female fans. They have always been there, and to be honest, you can't blame them -- hot athletic guys in small shorts producing amazing feats with their balls. Certainly can't blame them. There was a time when girls were crazy about Italy. Now Gabriel Paletta plays for Italy, so those girls support Spain.
The Peer-Pressured:
Not everyone's crazy about football, but they feel socially obligated to feign an interest and support a team. So to make sure they don't become social outcasts, these people choose a team to support just to tell people they support a team. Often times if the club they support happens to have defeated a friend's club, they will spend months talking about it even if they probably can't name the scoreline.
The Clueless:
Much like the peer-pressured, the clueless are like lost sheep. The difference is that, they put in more blind effort at humiliating themselves. They can name maybe one star player of the team they have decided to boast of, and will constantly be talking about far-fetched transfer rumours they picked up from some football meme page. Oh, and they talk about football memes too. A lot.
The Apathetic
As one SHOUT sub-editor deftly puts it, "I don't see the appeal in an activity where 22 grown men spend time chasing a ball and go crazy if they can kick it inside a nylon net." These are usually people who are not into sports but can in rare cases be normal, sane people too.