Life lessons from being a football supporter

Posted on April 21, 2023 by Vishad Doshi, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.

DISCLAIMER: the first half of this long post is about the whys of being a football supporter. If that’s not your thing, feel free to skip to the final section (which starts with finally), which will be your thing.

Football.

What comes up for you when I mention that word?

Some of you may smile as it conjures up thoughts of the roar of the crowd, a last minute winner or a trophy lift by your team’s captain.

Some of you may tut, sigh and roll your eyes.

This is the thing, though. Both of these reactions (and whatever reaction you choose to have) are completely yours and valid.

Let’s take a moment to go into that second reaction; that tut, sigh and roll often comes with lines such as:

‘I don’t get why you get so worked up about it’
‘It’s only a game’
‘It’s a major ick (one for the younger readers – for the uninitiated, ick is akin to a turnoff) if someone watches the football on TV and gets into it’.

Even mentioning or talking about the match/your team with others brings derisive calls like ‘are you just going to stand there chatting about the football?’ or worse yet, fuel ‘banter culture’, where people are more interested in taking the piss and buying into the common, sometimes uninformed view as opposed to constructive chat or wanting to genuinely find out more about something.

I experienced that myself in the aftermath of the Champions League final in Paris, where human lives were put massively at risk due to astounding incompetence of those responsible for ensuring everyone attending remained safe.

When trying to inform those close to me (a group of fellow Liverpool fans, non-watchers and supporters of other teams) as to what had happened as they didn’t know, they weren’t fussed. They were more fussed about losing the game and Thibaut Courtois saving everything with his gangly frame, as opposed to being arsed about supporters being attacked and being put into mortal danger.

In fact, as soon as I’d begun giving the detail, many switched off or asked me sarcastically ‘so Vish, tell me what happened…’.

That mini rant aside, all of these are personal opinions and reactions, and all completely ok.

So let’s try and give some understanding behind these points. Why do we indeed get worked up about it, or even support a team in the first place?

Well, like with anything we do in life, we’re trying to satisfy our human needs:

1. Control/certainty – our daily survival mechanisms to satisfy the need to avoid pain and ideally find some comfort
2. Variety/uncertainty – Variety creates excitement for us. That’s what adventure is, as we see it as opportunities to grow
3. Significance/ego – We all have the need to feel that our lives are significant – that our lives are important, unique and in some way special
4. Love/connection – the need for significance is that it means you have to be different than everyone else. And just in the way that the need for certainty reveals the need for variety, the need for significance reveals the need for love and connection

If we look at some commonly cited reasons for being a supporter, we find that they can tie back to one of more of the needs above:

• Group affiliation i.e. the security that comes from being around like minded people – in this case, being around fellow supporters at the match or in the bar/pub: meets all the needs: 1 is satisfied by the fact that you’re around people like you (i.e. you’re all supporters of the same team) so you have a degree of certainty of what will happen within the group, 2 is met by the fact you don’t know how the match will go, 3 is met by associating with something good if the team wins or simply being part of a collective experience and 4 is simply connecting with fellow supporters when a goal is scored or the team wins

• Being introduced to a team by a family member – you get connection with your family and the fellow supporters
• A means of escape from the stresses of daily life – you get control and certainty from the routine and manner of watching the match, whether that’s in person or on the TV
• Supporting a successful football club will be likely to give you self esteem and therefore meet your need of significance because it will help you feel good about yourself because winning gives you enjoyment. Self esteem gives you the chance to feel better about yourself when your team is victorious you will celebrate. When your team wins you start to bask in the reflection of your club by being happy.

Going further, when actually watching the match, wherever you are and whoever you’re with, anything you feel inside you, both in terms of emotions and fulfilling your needs, is projected out onto your team.

So for example, that stress and worry you get from the team not performing well, losing a game etc, is your own stress and worry about your situation in life coming out.

Your team actually doesn’t make you feel that kind of thing. You do.

That goes for the good and bad. If you’re lucky enough to support certain clubs that exude values like single minded unity, humility, support, faith, community, spirit and hope through whatever means (the players, the play itself, the manager, the supporters with their flags and songs), they serve as magnificent examples to weave into your life too. Think of it this way: we don’t cry at movies because of the people on the screen, we cry because we put ourselves in the story.

With this all said, these are all just opinions, which we’re free to have. The point I wanted to get to here is that instead of judging people for having something in their lives that means a lot, let them have it. It doesn’t translate to you or anything else being less important in comparison or that by you being non-plussed or condescending about it as an opposite, it doesn’t make you better than them.

Follow your passions for you.

This is a message for me and anyone that needs to hear it. If people get it, they get it. If others don’t get it, they don’t get it, that’s ok – it’s not up to us to change their minds.

Ultimately, you’re only responsible for you. No-one else. You retain the choice.

Finally, being a supporter leads to outlooks and perspectives like this, put so eloquently by my coach Paul Cope.

This last section is about you and your life, and me and my life.

What are we in this for? Success? Victory? Trophies? I’m in this for dancing in airports and singing in train stations. I’m in this for fun, laughter and pure, unadulterated joy. I’m in this for meeting you, saying hello and having a drink in some far foreign land together.

Whether you laugh or cry is up to you, nobody else. Whether people taking the piss out of you for being confident of a win and enjoying yourself upsets you or makes you laugh is up to you.

I’ll never change. I will keep putting myself on the line. I will keep risking defeat in the knowledge that one day, one glorious day, it will all be worth it. I will keep battling, never quitting, never giving in. Never allowing the world to keep me on my knees. Always getting up one more time, and helping those around me to stand up with me.

I believe that we should always prepare for the worst but believe in the best. Visualise your life the way you want it to be and sooner or later you’ll get there.

Believe it or call it bullshit, but whether you believe you can or believe you can’t you’re right. You’ll always be right.

Just being nice to people changes your life. Just being positive. Just believing that things can be better and reminding other people of the fact.

Believe things can be better. Watch these lads and feel this joy and believe it can all be better.

Wherever you are, whatever you do, it’s never the end. It’s always just a story you’re telling yourself, so choose a good story. If it’s bad right now, tell yourself you’re in the middle of your own Rocky movie.

If things have been hard in parts of your life away from this incredible football team over the past few months or years, let it inspire you to keep going.
To get up.
Stand up.
Smile.
Find someone less fortunate than you and help them.
Give them a hug.
Embrace the world and embrace the pain.

We have walked through the storms and felt the rain soak our souls. And we know there is always a golden sky. Sooner or later. If you dare to believe. If you are prepared to risk it all. If you can be prepared to feel heartbreak rolling the dice for love.

Births, deaths, marriages, divorces are there throughout our lives. Yet we can decide. We can choose what happens. Where we want to be the next time. What we want to have done. To be.

Be you. Be the very best of you. Watch the captain and let him inspire you to never give up. To prove time and time again that all things are possible for those who believe.

I say I won a European Cup in 2005 and I mean it. I won. You won. They won. My generation won. To filter into whatever story we want to tell.

Make no mistake, that’s all this is. Our lives are just a series of stories we tell ourselves. The beauty is we can decide what stories to tell.

The facts never changed, only the stories we told ourselves.
So, tell yourself a good story. Tell yourself when times are dark that it’s just a moment in time. The darkness needed so that you can feel the light. Don’t allow the world to convince you that it has to be this way, that you have to stay on the floor because that’s just the way it is. It isn’t. Believe in that.

And, just as importantly, when times are good remember to savour them. To soak them up and be grateful.

It’s where most of us go awry.
Be grateful for your wife doing the things she always does, or your husband doing the same.
Be thankful for your kid giving you a hug or your parents fussing over you.
Let the small moments be as joyous as the big.
Hold the people you love.
Whistle and sing and dance.
Stare deeply into the eyes of your dearest friends and tell them you love them.

Dream your biggest dream. It’s all possible, whatever it is.

You can be whoever you really want to be and do whatever you truly want to do. Let this maddest of things be your inspiration. Let this craziness drive you forward.

I’m now a grown man and this magical thing of being a supporter still moves me like nothing else. I can feel it when I talk about it, when I write. The exhilaration in my voice, my quickening heartbeat. The joy rippling through my veins and my tingling skin.

I love this more than I ever really appreciated before. It stirs something in me that nothing else does. So I will be happy and, for once, completely unashamed of that happiness. It might be daft to many, many people, but it’s not to me. This is our tribe and these are our people. So enjoy it for everything it is.

..not bad for ‘just a game’, is it?

Feel supersonic