Why am I so obsessed with sports?
And why I support who I support.
I think I should probably start by telling you why I’m doing this.
I’ve been thinking about writing about sports, the business of sports, and everything related for a while now but it’s been quite frustrating thinking about the first article. I wanted it to be personal, something that matters to me, but my mind was a complete blank. Yes, despite the 9238372 hours I spend thinking about sports. Every. Single. Day.
If you already know me, you probably know that I’m a massive, massive Liverpool fan. If someone had to describe me then they’d probably start by telling you that. For the last 10 years, I’ve been wanting to watch them in person, a distant dream while I lived in India(I live in Paris now). Liverpool play Internazionale on 16/02/22, a week from now, and so I booked my plane tickets to Milan nearly 2 months back without any guarantee of match tickets. Yesterday, I got to know that I’m going to get a match ticket. I’m going to be inside San Siro, one of the most iconic stadiums in the world of football. In a week, I’m going to watch my heroes play football, the reason for my chirpy mood on days after we win, and my crankiness on days after we lose. European nights are what dreams are made of.
As I jumped around my room in childlike exuberance, I thought back to when & why I started supporting Liverpool, and my mind eventually wandered to thinking about all of my favorite sports. How does a kid sitting in India start supporting Liverpool, a football team in England, Rafael Nadal, a Spanish tennis player, Max Verstappen, a Dutch F1 racing driver, or even the French national football team?
Liverpool
One of my best friends in school was a Liverpool supporter, and at that time I was a very casual watcher, I preferred playing instead. So when one day he invited me over for Liverpool vs Manchester United match (2011), naturally I made a Manchester United banner to support the team he hated the most, because isn’t that what friends are for? I realized then that I REALLY liked backing a team, even though I didn’t have much of an idea about the team.
Some days later, the same friend gave me ‘Gerrard: My Autobiography’, a book by Gerrard talking about his lifelong love for football, his career with Liverpool, and everything in between. I was obsessed. From a kid who once kicked into a garden fork almost having to amputate his toe, from getting stuck into the stars of the game when he was a nobody just to show them that he had arrived, to lifting the Champion’s League trophy after being 3–0 down in the final at half-time, inspiring the come-back. Wow. Reading about all of this, it did not get any better than that for the then 13-year-old me. Like I said, I was obsessed. Liverpool had to be my team. I got goosebumps reading about Gerrard back then, and I get goosebumps at the start of every match since. I love this team with everything that I have.
This may seem like a love letter to Liverpool FC, so I’ll stop and move on because I can go on and on and on and I don’t want to bore you.
Rafael Nadal
Growing up, Grand Slam finals had always been a family event. The 5 of us would sit in front of the TV and watch Federer take on some tennis player and eventually win. And why not? I think we can all agree that Federer has always been pleasingly aesthetic to watch, playing with a grace that almost transcends the fact that he’s playing a highly technical, extremely physical sport. And so, like clockwork, we sat around to watch the 2008 Wimbledon final, Federer vs Nadal. Now I’m not saying that Nadal was a newbie to the scene, he had already won the French Open multiple times, but this was the Wimbledon. The previous 2 years, Federer had already bested Nadal and was now looking to make it a 6th consecutive Wimbledon title, hoping to break the record he had already matched last year, set by Björn Borg. A recently turned 22-year-old coming up against the Wimbledon maestro, 26 and in his prime. Surely this goes only one way?
Nope, Nadal had something else in mind. This might be something that we’ve become quite familiar with now, but it’s still something that always has me mesmerized. We saw it recently when Nadal won his 21st Grand Slam, the most in tennis history, beating Daniil Medvedev. Of course, I’m talking about the aura Nadal radiates when the odds are stacked against him. It’s almost like he’s a man possessed. What I saw in the 2008 final gave me pure joy. I cannot say something that hasn’t already been said about the match, regarded by many as the best to be ever played. From the first point to the last, it was just perfection. What Nadal had to do was impossibly hard, and yet somehow he did it. And since then he’s had me hooked.
Why I’m telling you all of this? Because it showcases athletes doing things they weren’t supposed to be doing; things no one expected them to do. And I think that’s why I love it so much. Whenever I need motivation, I don’t need to look beyond what sportspersons are doing on the field or the court, or wherever. And I don’t even mean professional athletes. Not just Gerrard, Nadal, or a 17-year-old Max Verstappen becoming the youngest ever F1 driver. No. Just go out to the park and you’ll see a young kid trying to prove everyone else wrong, trying to be the best.
And then comes the collective joy. I don’t think I’m ever happier than when I’m supporting my team with other people who feel the same way as I do. And this feeling is more powerful than you think. I realized this when I was bouncing with the French supporters for a whole hour after the France vs Portugal UEFA Euro 2020 match ended in Budapest. More than 60 minutes of singing chants and screaming my heart out for a country I’d only lived in for a year, and still, I was so connected, feeling at home. I don’t think anything but sports can do this.
And this feeling of homeliness is what I’ll get when I’m surrounded by 2000 Liverpool supporters in Milan next week: strangers, and still, family. So off I go singing into the match, “bring on yer Internazionale.”
