GOL?

by John Lim

The suffering. The taunts. The disappointment. There are moments when you wonder why men and women want to become football fans, particularly on a night like this, when Italy could only sheepishly scrap a draw with New Zealand. Imagine, the World champions, needing a penalty earned from a jelly-legged Daniele De Rossi to equalise against a team led by Rory Fallon, a second-string striker from third-tier team Plymouth Argyle.

“C H E A T”

“Was the Italian team substituted by a bunch of actors?”

“De Rossi should win an Oscar for his dives”

The accusations were quite indefensible (aside from the fact that every team takes a tumble, so shut it). I’ve been through it before. I saw how in France ‘98, Roberto Baggio’s flick-on hit the arm of a Chilean defender, resulting in a soft penalty. And again in 2006, when Fabio Grosso fell over the prone body of Lucas Neill for another spot-kick. But even for an Italian fan since ‘86, the hopelessness of the match had me asking: why do fans bother with all this, really?

It’s not as if most of us were born in Italy, France, Brazil, Germany or whatever country you support. We don’t speak the language, or have a distant relative six generations apart to justify a nationalistic connection.

Those who have followed the Gol? Project so far would know that its writers don’t consider football to be just a game; there are deeper philosophical meanings that can be drawn from 22 men kicking a ball on a pitch. Life, love, marriage, religion, politics, fatherhood, economics, war, nationalism – all common themes metaphorically linked with football.

Nothing of which any seven-year-old – the arbitrarily accepted age when one would decide on their team to support – would understand. Seven-year-olds don’t understand why George Orwell calls football “orgies of hatred” or the significance of the Christmas Truce match of 1915. What they understand are simple dichotomies: Good vs Bad. Red vs Blue. Autobots vs Decepticons.

It was on such simple rationalities that I chose Italy. It was because they wore blue, while my brother supported Liverpool, who wore red. Simple as that. Likewise, many other local fans I know follow a similar pattern of arbitrary reasons: some of them studied in the country for a year; or maybe because they liked how Baggio, Van Basten or Maradona played when they watched their “first” World Cup. Some of them were told by their fathers that it was the greatest team in the world and they believed it.

Given such capriciousness, it’s boggling how switching teams is still seen as something heinous. In a time when divorce is increasingly common, when a typical Gen-Y employee has seven jobs in as many years, you’d think there’d be more empathy for someone who switches to another team. But no. “He’s not a true fan,” we often hear the spiteful accusation. “He only supported United when they started winning – he didn’t know what it was like in the ’80s. He doesn’t even know who Steve Bruce was.”

The idea of sticking it out, as Angelia Ong said to her child, has become a moral virtue thanks to the numerous fairy tales and stories told. Epic tales, be it the Odyssey, the New Testament or Gladiator, tells us that victory only feels sweeter after anguish, that the darkest hour must come before the light. And so it is in sport that fans must suffer before they can celebrate – and few fans are more long-suffering than those who support the Azzurris.

But fans grow wiser, and fairy tales and religion don’t hold the same moralistic guilt trip it did when they were seven years old. And in moments of vulnerability, I start to see the pointlessness of it all, and realise that the fair-weather fans were right all along. There is no shame in switching teams – why shouldn’t you support a team while they’re winning? The sky won’t fall down with divine punishment; it sets no precedent for my faithfulness as a spouse; it’s not an act of treachery because I don’t have any blood ties with the country and club I support. I’ve never even visited Italy, let alone speak-a-da language. I’m as Italian as Mario Bros and Domino’s Pizza.

The brutal truth is that it’s just a game, nothing more, nothing less. But shhhh! Don’t tell that to any football fan – we already know this, but live in denial for fear that one day the logic of the statement is sound, and turn into who we despise the most – the nomadic fan – and realise that it’s perfectly okay.