‘We live the match’

Elif Batuman’s piece in the March 7 issue of the New Yorker is a must-read (it’s behind the paywall but do buy the magazine).

It’s about the soccer fanatics of Istanbul and she focusses on Besiktas, a club who she calls “the underdog, the working-class team, known for the ardor of its fans”.

I had heard and read about soccer fanaticism before but this piece was an eye-opener.  There were stories of stabbings and shootings; of intense poetry, the kind one writes to an unrequited lover; of an underground mafiosi-like Carsi, the fan club; the extraordinary sacrifices that these fans were willing to make; the utmost disgust for Fenerbahce (including an obscenely creative Opera To Fener, which went viral online).

A student tells Batuman: We’re not hooligans. We’re one level above hooliganism.

Batuman is baffled about several aspects of these fans (and you can hear her thoughts in this audio chat). Here’s her observation about the relationship between the rabid fans and the players:

The players jogged into view, the Besiktas team in dazzling black-and-white striped uniforms. Radiating vitality as they shook out their arms and legs, they seemed to be of a different species from their supporters. It seems strange that ether of these groups of people  – the fans and the team – “represented” the other. And which represented which? For whom was all this more real? “The athletes are competing in play,” Umberto Eco writes in an essay about soccer, “but the voyeurs compete seriously (and, in fact, they beat one another or die of heart failure in the grandstands.” I heard a similar view from a Carsi member. “The players only play the match,” he said. “We live the match.”

I won’t try and recreate Batuman’s piece here – even if I do it won’t have even a fraction of the effect her prose does – but I was wondering about the allegiance fans have to a team.

Soccer in Istanbul, like soccer in various other parts, has a strong socio-economic slant: Galatasaray is associated with the elite, Fenerbahce with the biggest budget and illustrious fan-base, and Besiktas, the working-class underdogs.

That’s how I imagine the Bombay Quadrangular (later Pentangular) – a tournament divided across religion and played in front of intensely passionate crowds in pre-partition India. Reading accounts form games in Ramachandra Guha’s Corner of a Foreign Field, I could see the fans ‘living’ the match.

I have also heard of some astonishing stories in the Kolkata football league and the histories of Mohan Bagan, East Bengal and Mohammadan Sporting is incomplete without the sociological undercurrents.

Of course most fans, especially those in the US, have the template set-up: they support teams from their college or teams from their city. It’s a feeling of community, of those packed trains or buses with all the fans wearing similar jerseys, of the camaraderie in a bar, of the joy in the victory parade. One of my friends still remembers the day he walked into college after his team, Ohio State, had won the championship. “It was one massive ocean of scarlet. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

But what of the fan who simply walks into a stadium, reads a book, solves some crosswords, takes in slices of the action and leaves? Is he fan enough? I ask because I’ve spent several days in the Chinnaswamy Stadium, with a domestic match on, doing just that. I remember going back home one day and someone asking me the score. I had no clue. Of course, I knew the drift of the game but I hadn’t kept track of a single score.

I think I was a Karnataka fan, a fan of some players, a fan of domestic cricket, its quaintly intoxicating rhythms, the silence in the stands allowing me to hear the players clearly, the chance to spot a dazzling new talent before most other fans. And the chance, over time, to see that same talent make the transition to the world stage.

What of the fan who is consigned to the life of a tragic? One of my friends is a supporter of West Ham United, a club that has never won the English football league and is unlikely to do so in the near future. I asked him what kept the fire burning?

“We have our own battles to worry about – derbies, mid-table clashes, relegation worries. There’s never a shortage of drama. It’s just not top-of-the-table drama.

“And then obviously there’s that constant hope … that some day, maybe many, many years from now, we’ll actually win a title. And there’s something to be said about that waiting.”

I couldn’t help but think of West Indian cricket fans. There’s a theory that the game in the region has taken a hit because of the drying up of talent in the islands and the slipping standards of the team. That may well be true but in the time I spent there I gathered something more nuanced from the fans I spoke to.

I don’t think West Indian fans were hurt because of the talent not pouring forth. What really hurt them was the lackadaisical attitude of their current players, the lack of heart and soul in their performances. I think the fans were perceptive enough to see the level at which their players were performing and gradually walked away. It’s a crucial difference and a reminder that one can never take such a highly discerning fan for granted.

I want to write a more detailed post on this, including aspects related to fans of individual sports. But before that, I would like your thoughts. What kind of a fan are you? Do write in.