In June, the largest global audience in history will tune in to watch the FIFA World Cup in Brazil, a quadrennial carnival rivalled only by the Summer and Winter Olympics. Many will live and die by the progress of their teams, with hearts-in-mouths and lumps in throats. Tears, shrieks and all the rest will combine into smorgasbord of emotion that only soccer can induce. What is it about the game that gives it such widespread appeal? Against the backdrop of club football, Sheldon Fernandez searches for the answer ….
An excerpt of his new piece in F&O’s Think-Magazine section – part memoir, part musing:
The dimensions of my Man United fandom frightens me at times, so intense and entrenched are the emotions. When my team wins the universe is vibrant and orderly and rays of sunshine shower my existence. But when they lose the cosmos is a morbid void and I feel like a helpless actor in an absurdist play. Quite often the scale of these emotions is tied to the scale of the triumph or failure. In the wake of a spectacular victory I devour the newspapers like a giddy parent as if the team’s accomplishments are my own. But after a crushing defeat I erect a firewall, a media blackout of therapeutic and existential necessity, though in the back of my mind I agonize over wrongful tactics and chances missed.
Yes, this is absurd – so the detached philosopher in me, of years past, would intone to the fanatical version of himself today. Civil war in Syria, strife in North Korea, and trouble and tribulation elsewhere throughout the globe, but there you sit, raptured and transfixed, your happiness and wellbeing tied to an athletic scrimmage. The soccer enthusiast today would indeed mystify his more mature doppelganger of years past, but in-between these personalities there lies an interesting story, a gradual metamorphosis from soccer dabbler to footballing addict.
It began on November 26th, 2006, a slow and slothful Sunday for me but monumental in Manchester …
One day at Wembley: a soccer fanatic reflects. (This piece is published free, with public access, at the author’s request.)*
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