2009

Song Lyrics – Sporting Performances

There was this line I put for the performance of Chelsea against Barcelona in the CL semi finals on my Facebook status

They paved paradise, put up a parking lot…
- Joni Mitchell, Big Yellow Taxi.

The obvious reference is to the ‘parking the bus’ tactic they used to destroy the game and try to win by hook or by crook…

And on asking about the KKR performance for this year by a friend, I was quick to say

Bungle in the Jungle, and it’s all right by me…
- Jethro Tull, Bungle in the Jungle.

So that get’s me thinking, what can be a few others? Will figure out a few more and put in, as and when I think of any.

Save Newcastle United

Now I am nlsonot a Newcastle supporter by a long shot. My primary interest in them is whether they get the loss they should get against Arsenal, and whether they are able to get a draw or something against the others of the big 4.

But we all know the recent Mike Ashley saga, don’t we? King Kev thrown out… Ashley wining and dining the Arabs, and asking for GBP 400 M… Now really, GBP 400 M!!! And now a Nigerian consortium is trying to buy Ashley out …

And here comes Save Newcastle United. Remember, last season, there were similar talks about Liverpool being bought over by the fans…. but that came to nought. This, I hope is better.

I do know that Newcastle United one of the few other clubs the world over which can claim to be ‘more than a club’. I will agree to Barcelona, and Mohun Bagan. Newcastle, similarly, is a part of local / community pride, and is really a Geordie symbol just like Barcelona is Catalan.

John Nicholson (from oop north himself) puts it better than most:

Now is not the time for faint hearts, the time for the whining and whinging and bitching to stop has come. It’s no use just hoping something better will come along and make everything alright. It’s time to take NUFC, a quintessential ‘people’s club’, to the bosom of those who love and understand it best. A peoples’ revolution to over-throw the regimes which seek only to profit financially from the club or who want to use it as a play-thing or as a place to do their corporate business deals.

Click here for the entire article, on F365.

And here is the site for Save Newcastle United- click here. So if you feel you can do something, please go ahead.

I can tell you this much, if a similar fate befalls Mohun Bagan, I will chip in. with quite a bit of what I have got.

I am a plastic fan. This is my defense. Our defense.

I am what you call a plastic fan. Of Arsenal. And Barcelona. I am from Bangalore, India, and here’s my defense. And that of the millions that you ridicule every day.
I love the game. Having been initiated into football via the magical skills of Diego Madarona in ‘86, I cannot think of life without the game. I have played the game at a reasonable level, and still try to manage a game every weekend. Not very different from you, am I?
I have an Indian club I love, Mohun Bagan AC. I don’t stay in my city of origin, Kolkata (Mohun Bagan is from that city), anymore, so I don’t get to go to the stadium too many times anymore (Bangalore to Kolkata is 2000 miles, yes, that was 2000 miles), I used to be a regular. I wept after a defeat, especially to our eternal rivals, East Bengal FC. I was jubilant after wins. I still am, watching the matches on TV. I am what you call a normal football fan, I love my club.
Just like you love Huddersfield. Just like you love Bradford, just like you love Derby.
But I also love the game itself. And I am honest enough to accept that Mohun Bagan, or East Bengal, or Dempo, or Mahindra Utd. , don’t really provide that kind of football. That does not make me love my club any less, that just makes me want to get a chance to watch and enjoy better football too.
And therefore came the Premiership. And therefore came the Primera Liga. I love how well they play the game I love in your country. And in Spain. There is the television, and I don’t miss a match.
I am watching the league from 1998 (that is about the time when the Premier League started being aired regularly in Indian TV, thank you Star Sports / ESPN), I was 18 then. Tony Adams is my hero, and Dennis Bergkamp is only second to Diego Maradona in the God-stakes, in my book. I HATE Luis Figo, he’s the real Judas. I am jubilant when Arsenal wins, I am dejected when Arsenal loses. I follow every match, I follow the post-season, and just like you, I wanted us to have a holding midfielder too. And no, I didn’t want Alonso, I wanted Toulalan. Ah, wishes… I am a fan.
And yes, I have been to your stadia (not to the Emirates or Highbury, sadly. Never stayed in England long enough to manage that yet), and I know that the tears that you cry when your club loses will never be the same as my sadness at an Arsenal defeat. But I know the tears, I have cried them after a Bagan loss.
But does it mean that our sadness at an Arsenal defeat counts for nothing? We came to the premiership looking for great football, we found a club we would like to follow, and we followed the club. And devoted we have been, for the last ten years. And yes we don’t have perspective; they started showing the Premier League on TV only ten years ago. I thought we did the best we could as fans. Where did we go wrong?
I thought it was the universal game.
- Godof86 (don’t ever say ‘third world’ again without knowing what the word originates from), Arsenal, Barcelona and Mohun Bagan.

Salaam Stanley Matthews – Review

As you know, I am in the process of reading the educated, researched and serious book on football in India that is ‘Goalless’ (It is good, but does take time.. the next in the pipeline is ‘The Ball is Round’ by David Goldblatt, another tome… but hey, I like research stuff). But in the meantime, due to the holiday on Monday (Labor Day in the US, godbless), I could take time off from Goalless, and finish off ‘Salaam Stanley Matthews’ by Subrata Dasgupta. Now this is not really a sports/ football book as such, but is a memoir of Dasgupta’s when he was in England (Nottingham, and then Derby) between ages 5 to 13. It does focus a lot of attention to life in England as an Indian immigrant, and yes, football, and the crown prince of English football at that time, Stanley Matthews, does have a significant part to play in the book.

I liked the book. There is little pretense, and Dasgupta’s writing is direct and honest. He writes it as he sees it, and does not over-dramatize. The travails of the Indian upper-class boy from snooty high-end Kolkata post-independence in egalitarian England, the whole growing-up saga, is expressed is reasonable detail, and flows smoothly as a nice, consistent read. While I am not from snooty high-end upper-class stock, and I was never affected by the peculiar situation that Dasgupta describes as …

I was, instead, quite unwittingly, the kind of person Thomas Macaulay in the 19th century had talked of when he wrote of persons “Indian in blood or color but English in taste”

… I do relate to the Bengali up-bringing well enough for Dasgupta’s memoirs to be relevant and interesting. And anyway, sport followers are all knit from the same fabric. The normal ways of hero-worshipping the sporting star, following the local club, the very personal joy of the triumph of the favorite club and the despair at a loss, they all ring true. There have been similar personal experiences as well.

 

And I would like you to savor a specific part of the book which in my opinion expresses the feeling of a ‘non-local’ fan better than most non-fan literature I have read. Dasgupta stays in Derby, and thus is, ‘by location of origin’, a Derby fan.  But he is a worshipper of Stanley Matthews and Stan Mortenson and the flair game of Blackpool as well. And this quandary is discussed in the following way.

.. I certainly came to a kind of rationalization along the following lines. Derby County was the town’s local team. It was like family- one is bound to it by blood ties. Whereas the ‘other team’, whichever it was, was like a best friend. There was no problem in loving a relative and a friend; they were two different kinds of love. As for a third team – like Graham’s Aberdeen – well, that is more a kind of fascination than love or passion, the fascination one has with a distant place or relative across the seas.

I agree. My blood ties are with Mohun Bagan, the only team that I have no choice but to support. I was born a Mohun Bagan supporter, for reasons locational and national.  I cannot support any other Indian team, least of all East Bengal. I have been following Arsenal for far too long for it to be considered anything other than a best friend. I know all the ins and outs of the club, and am fascinated by all aspects of it. And Barcelona is the club I am fascinated by… again, for more reasons than one. Ditto Napoli, but that’s for only one reason. Diego.

 

And indeed, this book gives me something to think of. Maybe the book I will write someday will be of the boy in some grey, dusty corner of Bengal in India, the proverbial sporting backwaters , playing sport with passion and fervor, and becoming a convert to the exquisite, gorgeous sporting skills and personal tribulations of Diego Maradona, of Boris Becker and of Mohammed Azharuddin. And becoming a convert to sport.

On being an Indian fan of Arsenal and Barcelona….

I am a fan of Arsenal. And I am a fan of Barcelona. and having been initiated into football via the magical skills of Diego Madarona in ‘86 (weren’t you asking who/what is the godof86?)… I share the Eduardo Galleano – certified love for Joga Bonito. Having played the game at some level, I understand and appreciate a great defensive performance by say, Alessandro Nesta, and that is beautiful football for me too…. I love expressive, free-flowing football, and during the time I started watching the European game in all seriousness, the most beautiful, attacking and free-flowing football, in my opinion was played by Arsenal and Barcelona.

So I was, and remain a fan of Arsenal. And a fan of Barcelona.

And I have been in London for about a day in total, mostly in transit. And I have never been to Barcelona, though I would love to be in both of the places. Camp Nou would be fabulous, I know. And so would be the Emirates. I will like to visit the shopping mall which is in place instead of Highbury, and feel sad for I could never have been there to the stadium.

And then someone at Football365 screams abuse at fans like us, from distant India and Singapore and Hong Kong, for showering our support to clubs with whom we do not share locational or cultural synergies. And they call our ilk fair-weather fans and glory-hunters.

My real team will always be Mohun Bagan Athletic Club, in West Bengal, India. And yes, if you ask me, I go to the stadium to watch Mohun Bagan whenever I can, whenever the travails of holding down a job allows me to. A victory in the Indian National Football League can gladden the heart like nothing else. Like all other Mohun Bagan fans, the pain of defeat, especially to those bangladeshi refugees of East Bengal Sporting Club, can be at times just way too hard to bear. 

Yet, do understand that the football I get to see, supporting Mohun Bagan, is not really top drawer. But I really like the game! And European football is available on TV all the time (not the Championship, though)… so I naturally watch all the games I can, and due my preference for skillful, free-flowing football, I support Arsenal and Barcelona. And thus I have been supporting both the clubs for the last ten or so years.

And yes, if you ask me, a loss to Spurs (thankfully, that’s extremely rare) does not affect me so much that I feel for a while that this life is not worth living. Neither a loss to Real. They do affect me to quite an extent though. I do feel gutted after a defeat…. but yes, the pain you, North London / Catalunya dweller are dealing with might be more than that I face. And do realise, I know the feeling. I feel the same when Mohun Bagan loses to East Bengal. Or even to Mohammedan Sporting, rare as it might be though. Is that reason enough to spew venom at us? Really, when we started supporting Arsenal / Barca, we had no clue that we have to justify our support some day.

Look, I would love for Mohun Bagan to play football of such a level that there are fans of us in the farthest reaches of the world, but that is not to be. And you, dear north London / Catalunya dweller, would feel the same have you been in my position. And more fans would mean more money, and more money would mean better players in our team, and thereby more trophies. wouldn’t you like your team to win? As of now, as a Mohun Bagan man, I have to live with the limited glory of coming in the top 4 of the Indian National League after long last, and as a Gooner / Cule, I would like them to win the Premiership / La Liga, and meet in the finals of the Champion’s League. Well it’s happened once, and not too long ago…. I watched the match with friends, and I wore a Barca kit in the first half, and an Arsenal kit in the second.