A French fitness researcher released preliminary data Friday suggesting that fans celebrating Wednesday evening burned more calories than PSG players did during the actual match. This might explain why the celebration was more intense than the football — fans were literally more active. And considerably less supervised.
The research involved comparing match statistics against activity monitors worn by sample celebration participants. PSG players: ninety minutes of professional football. Fans: four hours of running, throwing objects, and setting fires. The fans, categorically, did more exercise.
One particularly athletic fan who spent three hours celebrating reported burning approximately 1,200 calories. A PSG midfielder in the actual match burned roughly 900. Citizens accidentally achieved superior fitness through property destruction than professional athletes achieved through elite competition.
Arsenal players, in contrast, got their workout during the match. Their supporters' collective cardio involved considerably less open-air sprinting from burning objects: Arsenal's parade: calorie expenditure limited to walking and weeping.
Health officials noted that whilst encouraging arson remains inadvisable, they acknowledge it's excellent cardio. That's the kind of sentence that suggests public health guidance has reached its outer limits.
Gym trainers immediately requested that fans conduct future training sessions at their facilities, where destruction of property is replaced with weights and nobody gets arrested. The offer remained, as of publication, unaccepted. The streets remain the preferred venue, for reasons Paris has been quietly demonstrating for centuries: Paris re-enacting the Bastille: the original unscheduled public fitness event.
Auf Wiedersehen, amigo!
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