Football fandom is senseless in itself

Football fandom is senseless. Especially when you are from a part of the globe where your beloved club that commands your admiration, support, adulation, and obeisance does not reside.

I am an Arsenal FC supporter. Having being a follower for nigh on 20 year of my existence. I have known the glory days when we sat at the pinnacle of English football, with Arsene Wenger’s every move birthing sporting gold. Then I have followed as we did depart Highbury, and move to Ashburton Groove’s Emirates Stadium, with ensuing decline and reduced aspirations.

These days we are winning silverware again, and so the cycle of joy and pain has hit a positive patch. I desperately hope so.

I have devoted a quarter of my lifetime basking in the victories, hurting in the defeats, contesting heated arguments about the finer points of the beautiful game. Tactical philosophies, angles of attack, defensive formations, game management, zonal marking, player transfers, managerial vacancies, injury management, rival intelligence, late winners, bullet headers, extra-time winners, and mercurial talents.

All of these for what?

I look with envy as my acquaintances who do not share my love for football walk on by. They are spared this world of adrenaline and pain, spending their days in non-sporting bliss, and delegating their expendable energy to hedonistic pursuits.

They are the true voices of reasoning, and they never fail to point out the folly of our ways. I never admit this, and find new ways to arrogantly ignore them, but they are right. Football fandom makes no sense.

I have seen people lie awake at night, after a loss by their team, crying their hearts away, and choking on their tears. Also have I known many to celebrate with abandon because a game was favourably decided. These have happened to me.

But then the dedication gets darker. People lose their lives to football. Fans have been known to commit mass murder and countless crimes over their strong affiliation to a club. Others have found creative way to hurt people who do not follow their ways. How about football-inspired terror campaigns? They exist also in little pockets of humanity.

This makes no sense. If anything, it is akin to the bloodshed and gruesome misdemeanours of the fanatical religious faithful, who ascribes wrongdoings to a higher being. In this case, who do it for a sport.

Football clubs aren’t known to be huge admirers of their fans. They don’t actively get involved in the lives of their teeming adoring numbers. You don’t matter to Arsenal, Chelsea, Real Madrid, Man Utd, or Liverpool. You are simply good business, a lone negligible statistic in their empire of sporting entertainment business. They only want your money.

So why do we do this? Why throw ourselves at these sportsmen and their parent club? Why hate on a man because he loves the ideology of a footballing business structure? Are we incapable of critical thought? Are the facts of this matter not clear to us?

Of course they are. Fans know these basic truths too. We understand that football fandom is senseless in itself, but we do it because it makes the wait between now and our deaths more fun.