Don't let your football fanaticism irritate one's personal life

BEING a die hard fan of any grand football club isn’t a sin, but the way we behave in displaying our fanaticism does really tell about our personal attitudes.

Football is about celebrating and respecting differences. The sport was never created to cause a separation of human beings like the politics does to many international countries.

When I was about 8 year-old kid, I was regularly taken by my late uncle to the football stadium in Paroi, Negeri Sembilan to see the Negeri Sembilan team play live.

Being a spectator in the stadium was, to me, special when not many of my primary school friends happened to be there often, especially when strong rivals like Selangor and Pahang came as an opponent.

As a kid football fanatic, I learnt a thing: fanaticism of the fans was what made football a celebratory sport, especially when the stadium was full of the same-coloured crowds— red and yellow.

Negeri Sembilan fans were all euphoric. We applauded loud when the players came onto the pitch. We celebrated together whenever the team netted a goal. And importantly, except booing, we didn’t physically or vocally insult opponent teams’ fans when we were on the losing side.

Losing in football is normal as it’s a who-scores-more-wins-the-game sport, but what ruins the beauty of football is the existence of certain ‘oversensitive’ fanatics who exchange opponents’ mockeries with personal attacks.

Attacking one’s personal life isn’t an uncivilised thing to do even if you can’t personally endure the heat of banters thrown to the football team you support.

Mocking our friends’ favourite clubs, especially after a match, had been a joyful thing to do when I was a university student, but we never touched our friends’ personal behaviours or traits or physical if we were not happy with football banters mocked against us.

Instead, we joked about things like top-class players who made silly mistakes against ordinary clubs or missed scoring chances that couldn’t happen to a school-level striker. Also, we made fun of, “When was the last DECADE your teams played in the UEFA Champions League, or winning a domestic trophy?”

Any form of personal attack, especially when it’s done in social media, must not be seen as a “norm” when cyberbully has never been accepted globally.

Regardless of its subject matter or reasoning, our personal feelings towards frustrations we face because of a humiliation or embarrassment vomited against our football team must not be retaliated with personal violations that could be emotionally harmful to the violated, especially women.

Even in politics, even if your party or politician you hail faces harsh public criticisms in a social media posting, it doesn’t mean that you can simply reply ones’ comments by body-shaming them or insulting their family members.

What’s the relationship between one being overweight and commenting, “We are led by useless politicians”?

Fanaticism in football has its boundary. Don’t let it be infringed by your blind emotions and stupidities.

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* Amerul Azry Abdul Aziz is an independent writer who now views politics as something that can be researched.

** The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the position of Astro AWANI.