The Lair of Listifax: 2025

2025-04-02

SHUT EVERYTHING OUT AND PLAY YOUR GAME

Painting of the Forza Garibaldi tifo from last year.

Whatever Tuchel thinks, whatever the media says—he's playing his game!

A cartoon-style watercolour painting. MGW is closing his eyes and covering his ears in a black background. He is surrounded by numerous white and cyan electric bolts that spreads out from a white halo behind his head. The text below says 'SHUT EVERYTHING OUT AND PLAY YOUR GAME'.

2025-03-25

Springbloom

By Spehs & HJMT
https://k-bms.com/party_pabat/party.jsp?board_num=25&num=37

2025-03-21

Big Six all beaten!

I forgot today was Cloughie's birthday. Oh how much he would be proud of us… 🥲

A cartoon-style watercolour painting. Callum Hudson-Odoi sits on top of a battered red cannon with its head stuck on the ground and has white and broken wheels. He smiles and holds a gold mast with ripped sails in his left hand and a red branch with three leaves in his right. Next to the cannon is a red trident and a blue rod protuding from the ground. Both are broken and chipped and a dark blue and white football is skewered on the trident's handle. A gray, light red and gray band billows from the top right into the bottom in the background that represents Forest's tifo at the match against City, which they won. On the top left is a tally mark of 6 lines of the Big Six clubs' colors that indicates Forest's victories against them in the Premier League by date order—red, red, blue, red, dark blue, sky blue. The first and fourth red lines are thin double lines since Forest beat Liverpool and Man United both home and away.

2025-03-19

I have faith that we can do it!

A cartoon-style watercolour painting. Nuno is grinning while holding the FA Cup next to him with his left hand and hugging the Champions League ball with his right arm. Behind him is the Forest crest.

2025-03-10

[Groundhopping] Hwaseong FC vs Gyeongnam FC 1-1

🟧🔴 Hwaseong FC vs Gyeongnam FC
⚔️ 1-1
🏆 K League 2, matchweek 3
🏟️ Hwaseong Sports Complex
🗓️ 2025-03-08
🕑 14:00
🎟️ 10000 KRW
👥 1425

✍️ A battle of the two meme gaffers. Cha Du-ri's catchy supplement ad song was a mega hit in the early 2010s, while Lee Eul-yong is famous for the Eul-yong ta incident...which has its own English Wikipedia page?! (sadly Sinophobia is only continuing to grow here)

Unlike the first match where the cheerleaders were going around the seats, the club decided to make a supporters' section and made them stay there. It was a family friendly atmosphere with many in the stands and young voices singing along the chants. The crowd halved after the opening game but that wasn't surprising.

Hwaseong's biggest obstacle in gathering fans is that the stadium is pretty inaccessible. 40% of the city's population live in the rich new town Dongtan in the northeast end, and it takes 2 hours by public transit from there to get to Hyangnam in the south where the stadium is. Even Suwon Samsung is closer to them, and since they're one of Korea's most popular clubs, a lot of Hwaseong's football fans have already gone over there. The silver lining is that Hyangnam is also a budding new town, so they'll have to get the fans from there. Let's wait and see.

Also credit to the away fans, they travelled 5 hours from the south coast!

2025-03-05

[Groundhopping] Hwaseong FC vs Chungnam Asan 1-1

🟧🦉 Hwaseong FC vs Chungnam Asan
⚔️ 1-1
🏆 K League 2, matchweek 2
🏟️ Hwaseong Sports Complex
🗓️ 2025-03-02
🕑 14:00
🎟️ 10000 KRW
👥 3731
🍔 Sundae(Korean blood sausage) 5000 KRW

✍️ Hwaseong's first ever professional match played on their soil. An historical moment for a city of 1 million, with the mayor's speech and fireworks and everything. While getting some scran I overheard some people talking about the last match. 'The city had prepared a lot for the away game, they even gathered all the civil servants to a send a crowd of thousand.' I thought it was funny but I already should've noticed that, let me say… this wasn't the club with the most fervent fans.

First off, clap sticks handed out to the supporters! By returning it you little fridge magnet with the matchday info. You see, this club don't really have a supporter culture yet. The ones trying to rally the crowd were the cheerleaders and a small group of middle-aged people with Korean drums. They tried their best but weren't very persuasive to the side I was sitting on. (Actually I was on the wrong row when taking that 1st pic)

It rained on the 2nd half so they opened the 2nd floor. This place is pretty big with 35 thousand seats. No roof for the away fans, despite being just a 5-year-old club they were quite well organised with their support.

This ended up more like a ramble, was I too harsh to a club that just turned professional? I have just 2 games left to be their number 1 fan on Futbology, anyway. 😅

2025-03-01

To Munich & Madrid

This and the previous 7-0 were a bit inspired by the Vienna Secession posters I saw at the National Music of Korea.
The guy is Larry Lloyd, RIP.

A cartoon-style watercolour painting. The background is vertically divided into 3 parts—a white centre that covers half of the canvas with two red sides. Larry Lloyd stands in the centre and smiles down as he holds up a giant Champions League trophy above his head. White radial lines come out of the trophy on top of the red parts, which stretches down to form a star shape on each end of the bottom of the canvas. Below Larry is a small Forest crest with the text 'TO MUNICH & MADRID' in all caps.

2025-02-24

[Groundhopping] Seongnam FC vs Hwaseong FC 2-0

🪽🟧 Seongnam FC vs Hwaseong FC
⚔️ 2-0
🏆 K League 2, matchweek 1
🏟️ Tancheon Sports Complex
📍 Seongnam, South Korea
🗓️ 2025-02-23
🕑 14:00
🎟️ 15000 KRW
👥 3314

✍️ They don't know I'm from Hwaseong… Paying 5000 extra for the 2nd floor was sure worth it. And so that's the AFC Champions League, the Korean 1st and 2nd division all visited in one week! Whew!

2025-02-22

[Groundhopping] FC Seoul vs FC Anyang 2-1

👹🟪 FC Seoul vs FC Anyang
⚔️ 2-1
🏆 K League 1, matchweek 1
🏟️ Seoul World Cup Stadium
📍 Seoul, South Korea
🗓️ 2025-02-22
🕟 16:30
🎟️ 19000 KRW
👥 41415

✍️ First home match of the season, and Anyang being just 2 hours away meant a cracking atmosphere from both sides. And guess what, Lingard scored the opener to win the home side 2-1! He's Seoul's captain and biggest star and he's sure loving it here.

2025-02-21

It's a 7-0!

A cartoon-style watercolour painting. Wood and Elanga is holding up three fingers while confidently smiling at the viewer. Wood is also holding the Premier League ball. There are six thick lines in the background that creates seven spaces that represent the seven goals. Three goal and assist marks are connected to Wood and Elanga. In the first space there is Dunk with crossed out eyes. In the last space Jota Silva is doing his celebration. On the very top is the letter 7-0 with cropped out rectangles of Forest and Brighton's crests on each side, except the Brighton seagull has crossed out eyes.

2025-02-19

[Groundhopping] Gwangju FC vs Buriram United 2-2

🇰🇷🇹🇭 Gwangju FC vs Buriram United
⚔️ 2-2
🏆 AFC Champions League Elite, league stage matchweek 8
🏟️ Gwangju World Cup Stadium
📍 Gwangju, South Korea
🗓️ 2025-02-18
🕖 19:00
🎟️ 15000 KRW
👥 2688

✍️ Gwangju FC are having the time of their lives now. They finished 3rd right after promotion to the top tier in 2023, qualified for an Asian tourment for the first time in history and had already secured RO16 before this final round match.

Actually I don't follow the K League, this is only the 2nd time I attended a game (the first was FC Seoul vs Ulsan HD last November, seeing the stadium erupt after Lingard's goal felt extra surreal as a Forest fan in Korea 😅) but now I got interested and I'm ready to tick a few more off the list this year.