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This time COS reader Angga can’t help but feel the devoted football supporter has been handed the short end of the stick in life.
Watching the match with my girlfriend was a sobering experience. After Arsenal went behind for the umpteenth time this season I was sullen and unresponsive. I couldn’t understand how she just sat there, and I’m sure she couldn’t understand what my problem was.
But after celebrating Arsenal’s first goal with a volley of noises and screams that told neighbours that I was either killing someone or having the best sex of my life, but even after Van Persie scored the goal of the season I was far from settled.
My girlfriend quickly found out that the dying minutes at the end of match in which your club is clinging on to a one goal lead is not the time for a bloody conversation. In fact, I’m incapable of any sort of communication except for pointing grunting and saying ‘shut up’ – and that’s assuming I’m even dignifying her or anyone else with a response that doesn’t involve the word “c*nt”. Only after the final whistle is blown that we fans come out of this trance and are able to join the rest of society. I know my girlfriend loves me and so I just assumed that she’d be alright with me being a bit thick and abusive for a quarter of an hour…or a few hours. She’d understand, right?
Right?
A lot of, otherwise healthy, relationships are strained by this love for our teams. Not only guy to girl relationships but also fan to boss, fan to client, fan to orphans. As far as I know losing 2-0 to Manchester United isn’t a good enough reason to have a hangover during a meeting with my boss on Monday… or for telling him to shut up.
You can actually say that our love for club is a serious deterrent of emotional growth. It’s fair to say that, for the supporters, watching football reverts us into pre-adolescent children. Gimme, gimme, gimme that win. If we don’t get it we cry like the child we are, but if we do claim 3 points we’ll feel good for a week until the next match. I know many Tottenham, West Ham and even Chelsea supporters who have been inconsolable recently.
Despite the massive toll such devotion takes on our minds, bodies, family, friends, bank account, job and general hygiene – we probably wouldn’t have it any other way. We love our clubs but it isn’t, and never will be, a healthy sort of love – rather an infatuation. Except, of course, that we are doomed to one club for life. No matter how much they hurt us or how much we suffer, we can’t just go and turn our affection to another team.
Right?….Right??