Since when?
Since when have we Indians become such experts on all things football, especially European? Twenty years ago, there was no ESPN or Star Sports to tell me what on earth was happening in English or Spanish football. A year later you heard of Brazil lifting the world cup, and that was pretty much all you heard till the next world cup was around the corner. The next to non-existent media coverage failed to tell us what really was happening in the world of sports outside, and the premier league wasn’t as well marketed back then.
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Back then we didn’t have the tools at our disposal to know the club standings after a weekend’s play, or how much of it really made the papers here in this country. The internet couldn’t tell us what was happening, who had the most goals, and they didn’t even consider the assists then, one of the important stats in our weekend to weekend bickering.
And yet look at us today, the Manchester United fans gloating on most weekends towards the end of the season, with all the more reason from next season, thanks to a certain no.19. Arsenal will claim rightly to be playing the most beautiful football and be the Barcelona of English football, minus the titles of course, take great pride in how they gave the eventual champions a good run for the money. Chelsea fans really have a bit of that former special manager rubbed off on all of them, and pretend to ignore totally what the Liverpool fans have on their side(the only thing they have on their side right now) – history.
All I’m asking is when did we choose our allegiance? Unlike the people in England, we werent’ born into a family that watched football the way this country watched Sachin. No, we did not inherit a club from our parents, or relatives, or by virtue of where we lived. A person that starts to watch the game today is totally justified in picking his side from all the information he has at his disposal, and you are going to see even the likes of Spurs and Manchester City, and that’s good. At least it won’t just be four. The likes of you and me had to choose from what little we heard while we grew up, and that information was limited. We would only hear about a few big matches, their results, who won the league at the end of the year, because back then, the newspapers covered as much of football as they cover the inter school tournaments in the papers these days. The sports page was barely a page long, a little longer if there was a cricket world cup, and even tennis grand slams got more attention.
And yet, I have to take so much bullshit from “die hard” loyalists of other clubs because I support Manchester United. They accuse me of following the crowd at a time when I didn’t know there was a crowd to follow. My judgement, and presumably those of others around me as well was based only on what I saw, and that was limited. I am hoping that the others based their choice on this as well. I did not know then how many others followed the same club as I did. There were other things I did not know then as well. Take for example the number of titles that Liverpool had won. Or how many ManU hadn’t won, or a club named Chelsea.
And you have to be a total hypocrite if you actually suggest that you knew all this while you were still at school in the 90s. But did history really matter to us then? or does it even matter today? We want our club to win, and not finish second. Nobody remembers who came second, or how close your club actually came to making it. No, you’re just making excuses. If history was all that mattered, Liverpool fans could turn off their televisions for as long as they held the record, since they had history on their side. But we tune in week in, week out to see our clubs win, and fight it out and argue till we are either too drunk or our voices too hoarse.
I did not know as much then of a fabled rivalry with Liverpool, and even today, most of us can only pretend to understand what Rooney says when he says he hates Liverpool. We did not grow up in a country dominated by football, and was never made to feel any lesser because of a club we supported. No, Rooney gets it, we may never. He inherited it, but our kids won’t. They would know which the dominant club is at the time when they become passionate about the game, the best marketed, and which features the marquee players. Which can sort of explain the mad rush of fans towards Chelsea with their dominant display in the last five seasons, but prior to which barely had a history. Even Blackburn had won a title since it became the premier league, Chelsea needed the special one.
When I was watching, there was only one club that dominated proceedings, year in, year out, and more consistent than we are given credit for. The world laughed at Manchester United when the world’s best team ‘put us in our rightful places’. The fans of other rival clubs were only too quick to point out that we would never be better than Barcelona. And how many of these Arsenal fans cried foul when Lehmann was dismissed in the only champions league final the club ever reached? Back then, nobody ever said that Barcelona was the best club in the world, or that they were “mes que un club”, especially Arsenal fans. Ancient history?
While people around me seem bewildered at times that I support a club cheered on by a host of others, I seem to be the only one thinking that I have better reasons to support this club than whatever they might. I can totally understand someone supporting Arsenal, they did have 98, ’02 and ’04, the year of the invincible, still perhaps the only YouTube video posted by loyal arsenal fans. That sort of a run can win you a lot of neutrals who hadn’t picked a side by then. But I did make the deal with the devil prior to that.
Which leaves us with Liverpool, and the only two explanations are Istanbul, and internet. Istanbul that scripted their last great story, and internet that will give you painstaking details of the previous 18. Sure Istanbul was a fairytale, and worthy of many dinnertime conversations, but to live on with the number 18 when the last title was won in 1990 makes me wonder, would you support Rod Laver or Roger Federer? How many people in India actually are fans of Laver, and would argue against a Fed fan the way two rival club fans argue? But even Federer has become old apparently, and the flavour now is Nadal.
And after Liverpool come the Chelsea fans, and the only thing I can assume is that either you never watched football till then, or that you are fans of Mourinho rather than Chelsea. How else could you explain your allegiance and Adidas shirts?
I know I may have made some people very angry, but I really am curious, as to how you all fell in love with the club you love today. I was stuck at a boarding school, no TV, no internet, I’m hoping most of you didn’t, because that is such an unfair history lesson advantage and defence against such allegations.
Ever heard this line from the Matrix Revolutions? Goes something like this, denial is the most predictable of all human responses. Go ahead, deny it.
