Indian Football Fans, an outsider’s view

So due to the Yoonited – Citeh semi on Saturday, there’s no Spurs game on the weekend as we were due to meet the sky blue half of Manchester; a club who’s most famous footballing achievement is of course finishing runners up in the most famous FA Cup Final of them all in 1981 to a football club from North London called Tottenham Hotspur and a quite spectacular goal by one Ricky Villa. It’s a bit of a shame that this match has moved to midweek as the planned weekend bender in Manchester can’t now happen and it’s unlikely with work commitments that I can make it to Manchester for a weekday evening game. Sky or the wireless it shall have to be.

Anyway moving on…I am of Indian origin and visit my motherland on a reasonably regular basis. One thing I noticed was the growth in popularity of English football in India. Indeed I had a beer and nachos at the Manchester United Café in a plush shopping mall in Mumbai, which had cocktails on the menu such as the “Scholsey Swerve” and the staff dressed in McDonalds style outfits except the Golden Arches was replaced with the Yoonited crest. On entering the bar I remembered a bizarre plaque declaring over 330 million people supported Yoonited all over the world and over 27 million in India. Not quite sure how they got those stats but ho hum. Whilst football’s growing popularity in India is something to be embraced, I didn’t miss a single Spurs game when I was out there including watching the Champions League first leg against Milan on a houseboat in Kerala there is something unbelievably plastic about it all. It’s almost like a fashionable fad much like Justin Beiber is amongst teenage girls. Its college kids supporting the likes of Yoonited and Chelsea so they look cool and it always seemed very artificial to me, it’s very different to football culture all over the world. I also wandered their interest in the Premiership was at the expense of domestic game in India. Why didn’t these guys channel their passion into their local teams, instead of buying a Man Utd kid why don’t you get a Mohan Bagan kit? Instead of watching English football in a bar and arguing with your mate who is a Chelsea “fan” why not go out and play football? I’ve always found it bizarre in a country where football is arguably the second most popular sport in the country after cricket and in a nation over 1 Billion they have done next to nothing in world football. There is a chance for greatness for India in world sport after the marvellous Cricket World Cup victory; the obvious passion for football I feel is misdirected.

The Arsenal Supporters club in Mumbai apperently! Seems just as silent as the real thing

There is what seems a popular blog on here by someone called> Desi Gunner, which I stumbled across when doing some research. Being Tottenham through and through you will understand that I am not too fond off our country bumpkin cousins from down the Seven Sisters Road but have to concede that since Wenger’s arrival he has changed the culture of the club from head to toe. Let’s not forget that the Woolwich were exponents of negative football and defending 1-0 leads with a long ball game but since Wenger’s arrival the club has changed into a team that Football purists cannot seem to praise highly enough, although if truth be told the current bunch resemble nothing more than a rather feeble attempt to resemble Barcelona. Anyway our man Desi on the aftermath of our exit to Real Madrid was quick to write a blog belittling our achievement.

Judging by the lack of pro Tottenham comments I guess the guy moderates his comments to not allow Spurs fans a say. I was actually intrigued by this article. When reading it, it struck me as a guy trying too hard, it was cold and mechanical. His attitude was “Let’s hate Tottenham because I think that’s what Arsenal fans should do”. Not to mention the cringe worthy use of terms such as “Tiny Totts” or “Spuds”. I must admit one of my pet hates are the use of these kids terms in football to describe teams…”Manure”, “Man Shitty”, “Wet Spam”, “Chavski”, “Arse-anal”, “Spuds” or “Sperms” etc, etc…yes I have referred to Man Utd as Yoonited or Arsenal as the Woolwich but the JCL nature in football and the rise of the internet and message boards has led to grown men with the mentality of five year olds using their keyboards to get their infantile messages across. The article itself is just mindless rubbish, he actually seems to think that the Woolwich- Barca tie was close and the Woolwich could have beaten Real Madrid, forgetting they finished second in their group and lost to Braga away from home and in that “Close” tie with Barca they managed an amazing zero shots on or off target. He also cites our reserve’s 4-1 extra-time defeat to the Woolwich first team (which he strangely talks about as their reserve team, naa mate I was at the lane that night, you weren’t, you were obviously watching something different) as an example of how far the Woolwich are ahead. Again I can’t dispute there is some work to do before we can consistently challenge the Woolwich or in more general terms, challenge for the title, there is a basis for a very good team at the Lane. My general thought on Desi Gunner, is that he is some who doth protest too much, if you read his introduction he actually thought Arsenal were named after Wenger…his support hasn’t been earned, its not natural. It’s a guy sitting in front of his TV mechanically watching a team he stumbled across and has no real affinity with. In the end I was embarrassed by him and the way he was giving Indian Football fans a bad name.

And that in a nutshell perhaps sums up the majority of Indian football fans at the moment; they are like voyeurs looking in. Banter is what football is all about but there is something artificial about there’s, they lack the pessimistic humour of other football fans, at present they seem to lack the bond between club and fan (which however distorted it may have become in this new corporate age of football, I still believe exists). But there is so much more potential for Indians within football. The atmospheres during the Cricket World Cup support that. That’s real passion fuelled by the tribal element that we love about football. By all means support an English club but instead of concentrating all your energy five thousand miles away, support your local teams and help Indian football become a force