(Being a football supporter) Is it really worth it?

Living in a cricket-crazy country and being a football supporter has very few benefits. Often times, especially after matches where Real Madrid has lost in the Champion’s League semi-final, my faith is rocked and in these dark times I am forced to wonder, is it really worth it?

It is because we football fans have to sacrifice a lot and endure much more. Sleep for one thing is always a problem for a football fan in India. A match of any consequence is always being played in some corner of Europe that has a minimum 7.5 hour time difference from wherever the Indian fan is seated. So inevitably, the live telecast happens at some obnoxious time like 1:30 am and by the time the match gets over and you’re done cursing the referee, you’re already one hour late for work. (The tell-tale sign of any football fan are dark circles big enough to be considered as lost rings of Jupiter.)

Then there’s the monetary cost involved with the whole operation. We have to buy club merchandise, which changes every season, posters, HD TV connection, beer, chips, a nice sofa, a better TV, surround sound, a bigger jersey because our beer belly doesn’t fit in the old one anymore. The total cost, with everything included, on average, is a little more than the entire defence budget of the country.

Add to that the physical deterioration that football entails. We’ll inevitably have a sore throat with all the shouting at the telly, cramps because our ‘lucky position’ – the position which we sit in every time our team wins – involves putting our left leg over our shoulder and obviously depression, irritability and high blood pressure caused by the matches themselves. Sometimes we really have to ask ourselves, what with all the existing stresses of modern life, do we really need the extra tension of supporting a football club?

And then to top it off, as if to rub it in our faces, the players we support are always going to the younger than us, earning in millions and going out with the hottest girls, so in the end, no matter what the outcome, the only losers are us, the anonymous football fans. It’s the final insult, the last mockery of our sad situation. But we’ll accept it because it’s the only way we know.

When our teams win we feel good, our chests fill with pride and we march about announcing it to the world until of course our voices are drowned out by the larger number of people discussing, Kolkatta Knight Riders V/S Mumbai Indians. There is no benefit to being a football supporter in India. There is no benefit and there sure as hell is no sleep, either.