By Yusuf Bangura
I love football, watch it every week, and regularly follow developments in Europe’s top five leagues. But I’m not a football club fan. I watch the game to be entertained—not to blindly support a team. My reason is simple: those who own, organise, or play the game are in it primarily for money. I should enjoy what they offer, since I pay to watch, and not invest my emotions in it.
The behaviour of the fans of Tottenham Hotspur last Tuesday in their match against Manchester City, when they celebrated their team’s defeat because they didn’t want their arch rivals, Arsenal, to win the English Premier League title, reveals everything that’s wrong about being a football club fan.
I have teams that I support and want to win because of their style of play and achievements, but I’m not a club fan. Similarly, I have teams that I dislike and want to lose, but I still applaud them when they play good football.
In short, *fandom*, or being part of a football club community, in good and bad times, is something that doesn’t sit well with me. I can change clubs when I don’t derive satisfaction from their results and style of play. Fans refer to my kind of attitude to the game as “glory-hunting.” I call it “fun-hunting”.
Looking back, I think I have had a ‘rational’ or less passionate approach to football since my childhood in Sierra Leone. Growing up in the Westend of Freetown, my first club was Blackpool, which almost everyone in the neighbourhood supported.
However, I found myself drifting away from neighbourhood groupthink or loyalty and ended up supporting Blackpool’s arch rivals—East End Lions, whose fan base was at the other end of the city. That was taboo to my friends.
Constant taunts and debates with two Blackpool players in our house at Campbell Street—Brimah Bangura (popularly known as BB) and Theo Williams—might have pushed me to the other side. Once I made the switch, it was easy to drop East End Lions when they disappointed me and pick other teams. I ended up supporting Old Edwardians (they had the best team at the time) and Ports Authority after a brief affair with Lions.
When I first went to the UK, in 1971, my favourite team was Manchester United. I was attracted to three outstanding players in that team: George Best (the best British footballer I’ve ever seen), Bobby Charlton and Dennis Law. However, I switched sides when United were relegated from the first division in 1974. I refused to go down with them! I loved the panache of Brian Clough as coach of Derby County and Nottingham Forest and gravitated towards those teams before I left the UK in 1979.
I provide this long background in order to talk about the irrationality of fandom that was demonstrated in the English Premier League two days ago.
Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester City played each other in the 37th or penultimate fixture of the EPL, with City trailing Arsenal by two points on the table, and needing to win the match against Tottenham to put them in pole position to be crowned champions in the final match on Sunday. Arsenal was banking on Tottenham to draw or win the match and give Arsenal a big advantage in their final Sunday match.
One interesting twist in the Spurs-Man City match was that Spurs still had a chance to claim the fourth spot in the league table and qualify for Champions League football if they beat City, win their final match on Sunday, and Aston Villa (their rivals for top-four) slip on Sunday.
Any rational Spurs supporter would want Spurs to win and hope that Aston Villa would slip. But, no, Spurs fans refused to support their team. They wanted their team to lose. They were willing to forgo a top-4 finish and Champions League football to deny Arsenal the premier league title.
When Man City scored the killer second goal, the Spurs fans joined the City fans to taunt Arsenal with this song: ‘Arsenal, are you watching/Arsenal, are you watching?’ It was unbelievable.
The Spurs coach, Ange Postecoglu, couldn’t believe that his fans would demonstrate such irrational behaviour, and called them out. A number of football pundits have also condemned the behaviour of the Spurs fans. Indeed, Spurs fans are still being mocked in various fan tv channels. Many describe the fans as having a “small club mentality” and lacking ambition.
But I think the reaction misses one crucial point about fandom. Fans surely want their teams to win, but when winning clashes with group rivalry, group rivalry takes precedence over winning.
Fandom is an irrational state, especially when the goals of two arch rivals clash. Fans will switch from the main objective of the game—which is winning—and support a loss if losing denies an arch rival the ultimate prize of winning a tournament. In their logic, the Spurs fans have been spared the embarrassment and taunts of handing their Arsenal rivals a premier league cup that has eluded them for 20 years.
As one football pundit has reminded Arsenal fans, the behaviour of Spurs fans is not unique in the football world of fandom. In 2019, Arsenal qualified for the EUROPA Cup final against Chelsea, and Tottenham qualified for the final of the Champions League against Liverpool. When an Arsenal fan was asked on an Arsenal fan channel (AFTV) whether he would prefer both Arsenal and Tottenham to win or lose their finals, he replied that if Arsenal’s win depended on Tottenham winning, they should both lose! He just didn’t want Tottenham to win the UCL.
If you want to just enjoy football, and remain rational within the boundaries of the game, stay away from fandom.
