Mes que en club: Part 1

July 27, 2020

It was the early morning 6th of May, 2009 I was tying my shoes on my porch and waiting for my friend. It was just another day of the summer vacation: walking up, playing cricket in the morning, then playing some indoor game or doing something else with friends, then playing cricket again in the evening, followed by soaps on television and sleep.

As my friend was arriving, I could see the happiness in his face. But I was perplexed because although news travelled slowly back then, I wondered what happened in a night that filled him with so much joy. As we started moving towards the parking lot(to play cricket), I asked him, “Why was he so happy?“. He replied, “You wouldn’t understand!” but then went on to explain it anyway. He explained that his club “Manchester United” has just qualified for the finals of the champions league and they were favourite to claim the famous “treble”. Manchester United, Treble, Champions league, he was right when he said I wouldn’t understand. Then he complicated things further when he said that “Tonight Chelsea are going to play the second leg, and they will probably qualify and we beat them in last year’s final, we beat them in the league this year, and we will beat them again”.

Back then, I lived in a very small city. Football was an extreme niche among five boys in my class. The city was drenched in IPL, and so was I. So, You can understand my lack of understanding when my friends spit out these foreign words to me. But why was I so troubled with something which I didn’t know and didn’t care? \ There’s a popular saying in India:

लोग अपने दुख से दुखी नहीं है, दुसरो के सुख से दुखी है।

“People are sad, not due to their misery, but rather due to other’s glee”

And it was true for me at that moment. I just couldn’t digest his happiness. Since Chelsea were not going to beat United, I needed to find someone who’s going to stop them from winning all these “things”. Because I thought when I was not able to digest his happiness now, I would have surely died from the poison of his happiness if United ended up winning all these “things”.

The only choice left was the “opponents of Chelsea”, because if United have it easy with Chelsea, I needed a wildcard. And the opponents were a certain “FC Barcelona”. Before today I had only watched clips of football, and the only name I could remember from those clips was Ronaldinho. When I found out that Ronalidhinho was no longer playing at Barcelona, it felt like a fallen giant. I started to question myself since, in that small niche of five people, one or two were Chelsea fans, and no one was giving Barcelona a chance, at least in that circle of football experts.

But I stayed firm, and the night arrived. Here I was, ready to watch a complete football match for the first time, in a home where staying up after midnight was forbidden(at that time). But the overall match experience was awful, Chelsea scored early, Barca were down to 10 men. And on top of that, I didn’t really know football, so nothing made sense to me. Had it not been for Iniesta, I probably would have not watched football again.

But this was not the first time that I had liked something new. Before this and after this, I have tried following several sports teams/players, which include everything from Tennis, Basketball to Dart and Triathlons. But what made me a life long follower, what makes football so unique, and a lot more, stick around for part two.

• ← Sweat it out!
• Mes que en club: Part 2 →