SAD IN A GROUP AND FAIR-WEATHER FANDOM
and too much chat about a certain football club, but you're used to that here by now
You know what makes me annoyed?
Whoever came up with the notion that we’re supposed to follow our football team ‘through thick and thin!’ Barking ‘stick with it!!’ and proclaiming that in fact, we’re not a valid fan if we don’t!!
Most of all though, I just don’t like someone telling me what to do or how to do my fandom. Obviously I understand the underlying sentiment: flaking on your team every time it gets hard is not nice, it makes you a fair-weather person and they’re not very dependable. People who really do stick with a team ‘no matter what’ feel righteous opposite people who cannot ‘stick it out’. They’ve been through all the hard times with the team and feel deserving of some good times, they’ve ‘earned’ it through their suffering and they’re not going to look kindly at jokers sliding in to enjoy the fruits of their labour.
A few years ago I was slyly accused, by an Irish man with a callous smile, to be a fair-weather fan (imagine me, a Tottenham fan, being told that?). He argued that because I had started following the team around the advent of Gareth Bale, in a team with Luka Modric and Rafael Van der Vaart, I’d had it ‘easy’. Those were the good times, according to him (I’d like to have a chat with him now). While I don’t tend to let the opinions of random men cut too deep (because what do they know, really), that stung. Although they had been doing okay, they were considered to be on the rise compared to past years, it had never felt simple to support the team through the ups and downs of the seasons, and I considered myself quite a devoted fan. The amount of times I’d been teased about my allegiances, and still stuck out my neck for them. The money spent on games and merch, the emotional energy invested. Tears shed. As a woman in a male-dominated space I’ve had to really fight for a sense of belonging, a ‘right’ to be there. I do feel like I’ve EARNED the title of supporter.
And with that comes the payoff, which is the somewhat bizarre community of strangers that come together, to celebrate and cheer but mostly to be in agony together.
Football makes sense as a collective, both on and off the pitch. One single supporter might not make a difference, same as one single player - no matter how much impact they might be able to have - will never be the whole difference. The players need each other, and they need the supporters. The supporters need each other too. I realise that I paint football fandom as torture (and it can be) but as I talked about last week, it’s football’s dependability that is its most redeeming feature, that and the community it creates. Truly for better or worse, probably til death do us part.
When we talk about ‘earning’ and ‘labour’ in the context of football fandom I find it funny, because in the football stadium the labour force are the players, and they’re the ones raking in the earnings alongside the management and owners. The fans are just pouring of themselves. They don’t earn anything, they just spend. Money, energy, love. There is an exchange, and the aforementioned community is invaluable to so many people, but I don’t think that fans realise just how much power they truly have.
That’s why the attitude of ‘sticking with it’ annoys me, because ultimately who are the ones that have something to gain by keeping the status quo? By fans shutting their mouths and behaving? The management and the ownership of course. The people running the circus. They’re happy to have fans policing themselves to stick with the team, fooling each other into thinking that ‘believing in the project’ is the best for the club in that situation, whilst the management can escape any real criticism or consequences from their actions, and continue to behave the same way. Modern football is a business after all. I’m happy to report that there are people who are not having it anymore, who have realised the value of their position. Change for Tottenham is a group of people who are campaigning for things to change at the club, aiming to be a voice for supporters and organising action to take place around game days. They’ve got a public manifesto, and hopefully I’ve got some more information to share next week.
These things give me energy to keep engaged, and simultaneously I just can’t keep climbing into that rollercoaster wagon labeled ‘Tottenham fan’ at the moment. As a person who scores 94% feeling and 6% thinking on the personality test, as long as it’s an option I will always be lured to the emotionally evocative side of life, and football will always be there to deliver. I had a premonition that it would not be good, but I still put on the Liverpool - Tottenham game after 20 minutes, squinting at the screen and sighing. 3-0 down already?! I gave it five minutes but the abysmal display made me feel sick. *Zap*, TV off. Something made me return for more however (94%), and the improved efforts made me stick around, even gave me some hope. That’s when I knew that we were out on really thin ice, and sure enough. I got to taste the sweet sweet nectar of a glorious comeback, only for it to be replaced by crushing hopelessness 30 seconds later, and full-on rage post-match. Angry at the refereeing fuck ups, angry at the defense fuck ups. It’s exhausting. But the ability to take it to my community, to vent with people who share my feelings, distributes the weight and takes the edge off.
Is it more cruel to have come within reach of salvaging a point and looking great, only for it to be snatched away from you, than to never have had a chance at all? I prefer this to the lethargic displays previously, even with the pain. I’m quietly excited for Ryan Mason, I really liked him as a player and I think he knows the players and our game really well, to bring out the best of them and take us to shore somehow. But without some brutal changes to the squad and to the management, I don’t see us breaking this cycle of under committing and underachieving. We don’t have a manager (and the one we SHOULD HAVE is very-probably on his way to another part of London 😭). I’m terrified of who’s going to leave in the summer. So much heartbreak on the horizon. For self-preservation reasons I’ve temporarily vacated my title as a fan, and I’m currently in my ‘nosy-neighbour-peering-over-the-hedge’ era, only checking in on them out of sheer curiosity (and spite).
BOOK REVIEWS
I’ve been getting through some more football books!
Wolfpack - Abby Wambach
Brilliant little book about some of the lessons that Abby have acquired in her life from participating in team sports, and I just love reading about women giving other women love. It reminds me of when you get a craving for something, say cashews, and you can’t stop eating them and you’re like why’s that? And it’s your body telling you that you’re deficient in protein and that’s why it wants you to fill up on it. Well, it’s the same with Abby’s book. I’m clearly deficient of narratives around women supporting women and I can’t get enough!
In Lotta Schelin’s Head - Lotta Schelin
One of Sweden’s most legendary football players, our number 8: Lotta Schelin. She’s Sweden’s all-time record goalscorer, with 88 goals, and when she left Lyon in 2016 she was the club’s all-time record goalscorer with 225 goals in 225 games (🤯🤯🤯).
It was amazing to get to know her beyond the football and be let into her head - which is funny because that’s the title of the book for a reason, and sad because head-related injuries is ultimately why she stopped playing football. She got massive issues with headaches towards the end of her career, which ultimately rendered her unable to even go for jogs for years. Learning about the way she’s been treated, not being taken seriously etc, is terrifying, and as we learn more and more about the dangerous links between football players and head-related issues, that’s the last thing you’d want to hear.
Next up on reading list:
Eat, Sweat, Play - Anna Kessel / about halfway through this one and LOVE it. It addresses so many topics that people don’t talk about, like the impact of sex and motherhood on athletic performance, for athletes and the general woman alike.
One Life - Megan Rapinoe / just started it but I can already tell that this is a Megan kind of book, her voice is really coming through the pages and it’s making me so excited.
As well as an assortment of Swedish books which I might write a translated summary of for yous: one on the history of the women’s game and one on the psychology of the game.