It was 1999 and football was starting to be broadcast in India. I never liked watching football and kind of found it boring. This was after all the peak of our obsession with cricket. Sometime after India's dismal world cup, I was randomly browsing channels and happened to switch to ESPN. A football match had just started. It was an older match being shown as part of some classics series. I thought - what the hell let me see this match through and see what all that fuss is about. about 100 minutes later, I had experienced one of my best sports viewing moments. In case you were wondering what the game was it's embedded below.
It was my footballing birth. I eventually found more info on Liverpool and read about Shankly and all the league titles and the European cups and Hillsborough ( I used altavista.com !! ) and all the other pieces history. This was also the time when Steven Gerrard and Michael Owen and Jamie Carragher were on their way into the first team. It was a club with history, with young players making it big. It epitomized everything good about football. I couldn't be anything but a Liverpool fan. It's been an emotional roller coaster ever after. We haven't had the luxury of buying whoever we wanted to, but we've chugged along and fought for some memorable wins and silverware. Arsenal and Manchester United were similar teams. Maybe a different football match on a different day and I may have supported one of them. I guess it's destiny. But all three clubs were gritty, hungry and ambitious and they were and still are doing it the hard way.
Which brings me to the two modern day irritants. Chelsea and Manchester City. Both clubs have virtually no limits as to who they can buy. They are never constrained in the transfer market by where they finished in the league. Now with Manchester City, as there was with Chelsea, is a sense of inevitability that they will retain the league and eventually be champions of Europe. While money doesn't translate into immediate success, the ridiculous kinds being put into these clubs facilitates success sooner rather than later. Sport is one of the very few areas where success must be earned not bought. When I see the likes of Man City, Chelsea and PSG, I feel sad for the rest of the football clubs who know that no matter how good their infrastructure and academies and coaches and first team are it's just a matter of time before they fall behind. I wonder how a Chelsea or Manchester City fan ( and I mean specifically those outside the UK with no obvious ties to the clubs ) can feel proud of their clubs successes. After all who are we kidding. Sure the players in question might have earned it, but the club as an entity has had no role in that success. Behind it all is some rich guy indulging a childhood fantasy of playing FIFA football manager with unlimited cash. It kind of undermines the whole point of forming associations and clubs and ultimately the spirit of the game.
Even if Liverpool were relegated to the championship for a decade, I'd be a Liverpool supporter.Tomorrow if Abramovic or Sheikh Mansour bolted, leaving their clubs to live a mortal existence, I'm pretty sure all the newly anointed Chelsea and Man City supporters would be gone with the wind. That would never happen to Man Utd or Arsenal or Liverpool or even Spurs. I just don't get how Man City supporters can be ecstatic at the sight of 4 or 5 Ex Arsenal players starting a game for them. And as Malaga, Portsmouth and Rangers have recently found out, the sudden withdrawal of an uber rich benefactor is the prelude to what is surely a gruesome gutting of the clubs assets and players.
I do not have anything specific against City or Chelsea. I would have written the same thing had it been any other club like say Villa or Sunderland or anybody else trying to buy their way to success. Spurs and more recently Newcastle have shown that it's not about money, that good old scouting and coaching and team work can also get you to the top.
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