•    HOME   
•    NEWS   
•    BUSINESS   
•    INTERNATIONAL   
•    TECH   
•    SPORTS   
•    LIFE & TIMES   
•    OPINION   
•    MY JAKARTA   
•    BLOGS   

For English Football, Nothing Beats Being There

Chelsea's Spanish striker Fernando Torres looks on during the English Premier League football match between Manchester United and Chelsea at Old Trafford in Manchester, north-west England on September 18, 2011. (AFP Photo/Andrew Yates)

A lot of people like the English Premier League. You don’t have to go far to see the replica shirts for evidence of its popularity in this part of the world.
 
For many who follow a team in the EPL, usually Manchester United, Chelsea, Liverpool or Arsenal (add Manchester City to that list if they win the title this year), fandom is watching the game live on TV. Some will go out and buy a replica shirt or two. Or three.
 
The game itself is 90 minutes. Then the shirt is put away to be worn another day. Maybe some conversation at work or school, read stories in the local media regurgitated from the United Kingdom.
 
Perhaps a few posters on the bedroom wall, depending on age. And that’s about it.
 
Given the distance between Southeast Asia and their favorite team, fans obviously find it very difficult to get to see their team up close and personal. So they grow up experiencing football as a 90-minute event where their team wins. Not many Wigan Athletic or Blackburn Rovers fans out there, so they can enjoy bragging rights the following day.
 
Superficially very similar to the English experience. Especially now in the Premier League era. But for many English fans the game is more than 90 minutes. Much, much more.
 
Match day usually starts early, especially if traveling to an away game. It involves meeting up somewhere, usually a pub, having a few beers and traveling to the game together, be it by rail or by car.
 
This part of the experience, actually going to the game, is almost as important as the game itself. It’s a new page. Everyone is equal. The disappointment of last week is still there but tempered by the promise of a new game, a new opponent and a new 90 minutes. Together, with your mates, you build up the game, you slag off the opponents and you firmly believe today will be the day your donkey of a striker finally breaks his duck.
 
At heart, the football fan is an optimist. Even the most pessimistic really doesn’t turn up hoping to see his team lose. Thousands of fans turn up to see teams like Rochdale, Hartlepool United and Northampton Town not because they are going to win the EPL but because they might sneak a 1-0 against someone like Peterborough United, Stockport County or Gillingham. It may not make the headlines, it may not be on TV, the teams may not be famous, but thousands do it week in, week out.
 
After a couple of beers at a pub near the stadium fans will head to the game, stopping to buy a match day program. These are magazines that look ahead to the day’s game, providing analysis, facts and statistics. They aren’t particularly interesting to read; they are produced by clubs and push the clubs’ view points; a bit like reading a North Korean newspaper.
 
Not interesting, but people buy them religiously, keep them wrapped safely in plastic bags and have collections of them numbering in the thousands stacked away neatly at home.
 
Another essential match day read is a fanzine. Most English clubs have at least a couple of these. Produced by supporters, they first started appearing in the mid-1980s and those that have survived have gone on to become an integral part of the match-day experience. Far more opinionated than the club’s program, fanzines tend to be more questioning, more cynical and more complaining. And many fans love a good whine on match day.
 
The game starts and all the optimism that filled the air on the way to the stadium dissipates all too quickly. The donkey of a striker will never find his scoring boots. The referee comes from doubtful parentage. You lose, you complain and you wonder why you bother.
 
But you bother because the game is about more than 90 minutes on the field. If football was just about watching grown men dressed in shorts kick a ball around on a bit of grass then we would have given up a long time ago.
 
Football is about the crack. It’s about your mates, it’s about the banter, it’s about the pub, it’s about the match-day program, it’s about the fanzine, it’s about the journey. And, somewhere in all that milieu, just one part of the day, it’s about the result.

A virtual bar where sports fans gather to talk about football, basketball, boxing, and more.