Dismay, dejection and despondency are all to familiar emotions for sports fans. Especially when it comes to football, the game that sees more ups and downs in a month than Barack Obama’s popularity. For those for whom football isn’t a way of life, this obsession that borders on life and death is difficult to comprehend. In India, however, thanks to cricket mania, and its related suicides and acts of vandalism, it’s not as alien as it may be to other countries.
It’s impossible to generalize how fans deal with disappointment when their teams lose, but I can speak from bitter experience to say when that final whistle goes and the result isn’t to my liking, I go into shutdown mode. After the television is banned, my mobile phone usually gets the same treatment, followed by all connections to the cyber football world. The last thing I want to do when I’m already unhappy is to have to listen to other fans gloat about a win. I’d much rather be the one doing the bragging. Childish? Perhaps, but it’s a far easier way to deal with an unexpected result. I’m a big fan of denial as a defense mechanism. Then there’s the other kind of mortally wounded fan, the one who takes as much as they can of a bad spell, and then decides to chuck it all up, dramatically threatening to sell their prized season tickets outside the stadium. The last time I checked, the wait for an Arsenal season ticket is so long, I’d have grandchildren before I managed to get my hands on one, but there were reports of Arsenal fans selling their tickets outside the stadium after the home loss to their oldest enemy, the Tottenham Hotspurs, last week.
Don’t get me wrong. There’s no shame in losing to a good side, or even an average side having a great run of form. It hurts, but it’s not the end of the world. The pain is in losing games that are expected victories. Like losing to a newly promoted side at home when you’re top of the league, or losing a derby at home to archrivals after squandering a two-goal lead. That’s when disappointment and heartbreak take on a whole new meaning altogether. I remember every final my team has lost in the last decade like it was tomorrow. Those are the ones you never get over. In 2009, my brother made his first (and possibly last) trek to Old Trafford to watch his team, United take on Liverpool. Liverpool won 4-1. He’s never recovered and I don’t think he ever will. It’s for all these reasons that’s why I’ve gradually have come to appreciate ‘neutral’ matches, those where I’m unconcerned about the final score and watch to appreciate good football, not worry about permutations and combinations of points and league rankings. If only things were as easy when your own team or their direct rivals, play.
Besides heading to the nearest pub to drown their sorrows, the prevalent way for today’s football fans to vent is to take to the Internet. Fan blogs dedicated to teams and players, Facebook status updates and tweets are starting to replace the football banter that stadium goers are accustomed to. It’s no longer about that witty cheer, that sarcastic song; these are the new age weapons of the social-network era. Players take to their twitter accounts to explain or apologize for a terrible result, fans take to their twitter accounts to demand overhauls in the team, from managers being sacked to players being replaced. I do prefer my immature approach in handling a loss, instead of abuse; I’d just rather not talk about it. What Jack Wilshere calls a bad day in the office, I call an evening that ruins my weekend.
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