Gloryhunters united

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My friend was in London a while back, travelling on the train, when he started talking to a stranger. As it turned out, the guy was a Watford FC supporter. Not a supporter of any club himself, my friend put forward that his roommate (yours truly) was, in fact, a Manchester United fan. The Watford man scoffed at that and said, “They all are. Once they start losing, then we’ll see.” Apparently, he was disgusted at this culture of supporting the team which wins without getting emotionally vested in the club.

Was I offended? Not at all. Personally, I actually agreed with the thought. I had the honour of having a classmate in school who went from being a die-hard United supporter to being a die-hard Liverpool supporter and then back to being a die-hard United supporter, as and where the winds of success blew. Two months after hearing him proudly gloat about Liverpool defeating Chelsea, United defeated the former in closely-contested match at Anfield. The next day in class, when I asked him how he was holding up, I groaned in frustration when he told me that he had always been a Red Devil.

There are an estimated 20 million United ‘fans’ in India. Yet, the proportion of Arsenal or Liverpool fans who are emotionally vested in their clubs is by far a superior number. Maybe, it shouldn’t bug me. But, imagine being in love with a girl for over 10 years, getting to know her, getting mesmerised by each one of her idiosyncrasies, devoting all your spare time to be with her and standing up for her when she makes a mistake and people laugh at her. But then, she gets a new hairstyle which makes her look prettier and suddenly a thousand new suitors pop out of nowhere.

I have seen United get knocked out of the Champions League at the group stage. I have seen them play with a midfield consisting of Djemba-Djemba, Alan Smith and John O’Shea. I have seen the club getting humiliated by teams such as Chelsea, Milan and Barcelona. At those times, I find myself, apart from a few other kindred spirits, surrounded by a vast majority of supporters who ‘never really supported United’. But come a major victory, and presto, they are all back.

I know that I tend to take football a bit too seriously. I also know that the fact that I sit in my living room watching United play on a Saturday night, instead of joining my friends at a party, and have acute withdrawal symptoms if the electricity goes mid-match, does not make me superior as human being to someone who chooses to live a far healthier life. But, I don’t think that it is asking too much, that if you do not support a club emotionally, then you stop acting as if you do?

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