A blind Chelsea fan was asked:
-What would you choose? Get your sight back or Chelsea win the Cup?
Responded to touch:
-Which of the glasses…?
The fan is the only sector in the football universe that does not charge to be there, he pays. And the only one who is not consulted at all. For him, the tribute of these lines.
Before tactics, long before sports journalists and coaches, of course before television and business, the passion for football was born. He’s been with the game since the game started. At the same moment that two sides were formed to confront each other with a ball in between, there were already fans on one side and the other. So let’s bow to the character who, along with the footballer, represents the oldest caste of this culture: the fan.
An Argentine leader, strictly speaking the creator and promoter of the so-called FIFAgate (it is CONMEBOLgate), who died immensely rich and without going to jail for even an hour, had the habit of saying, in a derogatory way: “You act like a fan.” In his intention to undermine, he praised. It is probably the highest praise this chronicler has ever received. There is no nobler condition. Instead, Gianni Infantino contradicted him: “We must be more fans and less politicians.”
Perhaps his happiest phrase. All journalists are fans of a club, they had a childhood and became fond of soccer precisely because they went to a field and followed a team. The issue is knowing how to get rid of that feeling when giving an opinion and doing it with equanimity.
After so many years of being in this string of journalism, I have an undefeated pride: I am still as fond of my club as the first day. I mean, as big a football fan as I can be. With embarrassment, I must confess: it is possible that neither as a husband nor as a father nor as a son nor as a citizen nor as a journalist have I had the nobility that I have observed in my character as a fan. In this my record is immaculate: never a duplicity, never a resignation, temporary quarrels, eternal love. And always punctually paying the social fee and the stalls that I use sparingly.
First time
On November 10, 1963, I attended the Independiente stadium for the first time, an old and ugly stadium that for me was a temple. I entered a fascinating world that since that afternoon completely trapped me. When we got back home, my mom asked us: “And… how did she do?” We won 2 to 1, I said, arrogant. I was already a fan. And all he had done in the stadium was collect Coke caps, look at the billboards, see the crowd for the first time up close.
When I left “El Grafico”, for a while I rediscovered Sunday and the incomparable feeling of going to the stadium again as a fan. It was like the prisoner who regains freedom: when he gets out of jail, he looks at the sky, takes three steps, stops, closes his eyes and takes a deep breath.
One has the immense satisfaction of being a soccer fan (also “of” soccer; they are different topics). Naturally, the fan says football barbarities. Some will insult, others understand very little. But it is absolutely logical: he is a consumer, he buys the product and drinks or eats it even though he is not sure what it is made of or how. On the other hand, it doesn’t do him much good to know. It is the only estate that is not consulted at all. Nobody asks him if he agrees with the price of the tickets or with the coach they hired (with his money) or with the number 9 or with the schedule of the matches. The member of any club who wants a change in his institution has two paths: buy the share package in the case of the private ones or form a group and win the elections in a civil society. It’s very complicated.
Everything good that a soccer manager does is for the fan inside. The rest is perpetrated by the contaminated individual, the businessman, the unscrupulous subject who lives in it
Fans don’t found clubs. Everything good that a soccer manager does is for the fan inside. The rest is perpetrated by the contaminated individual, the businessman, the unscrupulous subject who lives in it. He would never buy a log for three million dollars to keep one and a half, which has surely happened thousands of times. There is always the illusion, of course. The hope that a real fan, this is an individual with an open heart, will take charge of our club and allow us to dream and be happy footballingly.
There are, naturally, other values, less mercantile, more romantic, where the fan has abysmal advantages over the other associations linked to baseball. In love, in faith, in passion, in fidelity, in that consequence for the colors that he does not admit resignations. In all these items, the fan runs with Mercedes, the others go with three laps less.
It has been written hundreds of times that a man changes his profession, his newspaper (which is not easy), his wife, his religion, his country and even his sex. What doesn’t change is his football club. That goes with him to the next world. It has not been said, however, that the secret is that football is a love of asbestos, stainless, unbreakable and unfading. He preserves his youth, freshness and ardor for life. Destiny – paradoxical and mocking – appointed the English, just those phlegmatic subjects, to invent such a passion.
It is possible to see the beloved team play very badly; even watch him lose Sunday after Sunday; and it is logical that the heart loosens. But the next game arrives and the mere fact of seeing the beloved shirt sprout from the tunnel makes us forget all of the above. They reappear, brand new, the illusion, the green hope, the unconditional love, the full pride.
It happens that in just an instant -measured in seconds- we are run over by the past, what we are. Childhood, roots, the Old Man, friends, the neighborhood, the sense of belonging, Bochini’s genius, Navarro’s hard-hitting machazas, Pavoni’s miraculous saves, Yazalde’s goals, the seven Cups of America, that championship won with eight men! The 6 to 0 to the famous Real Madrid of the year ’53 -in the Bernabéu- that we did not see, but with astonishment we heard the elders recount. All the centennial glory summed up in that outing to the field. All the personal history compacted in a 30-second film; yesterday magically restoring today, making it beautiful. Time has been restoring faith, rekindling the votive flame.
It is the unfathomable mystery of the fan and his club.
LAST TANGO
JORGE BARRAZA
For the time
@Jorgebarraza OK
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