Psychology of a football fan

We love our favourite football teams, don’t we? So much so that a River Plate fan was once famously quoted as saying-“A man can change his clothes,his house,his girlfriend or even his sexual orientation,but changing your favourite football team! Its an unacceptable ‘sin’ “

Last week, a well-known “football-fan show” featured an English family where the father was a die-hard Manchester United fan and his son an ardent Arsenal follower. In the interview, I could literally feel the immense ‘grief’ of his father. In front of the stubborn son,the father said rather angrily-“Sometimes I wonder that i should better undergo a DNA test. How can this boy support Arsenal??”

I looked in utter astonishment and wondered-What is it that makes us love our teams so much? A love that even managed to overcome the ‘strong-bond’ shared by a son and a father.The expression of unbearable displeasure on the face of the father simply highlighted the fact.The impact of the ‘favourite team’ on a man’s psychology looked so significant that it made him cross all barriers.

Lets not look that far in search of examples! In our very own country,once a die-hard “Mohun Bagan” fan decided to sell his house in order to fund the money required to persuade Jose Ramires Barreto to sign a contract extension! A gesture which was later appreciated by the player himself.

A football team attracts more ‘loyalty’ than any other brand.Even when your team is woefully out of form or is fighting relegation,you tend not to leave your team and that is the very time when the ‘hardcore-loyal-faithful fan’ inside you comes out even more.So what if you return from the stadium with a sense of disgust and dissapointment on each and every match-day after match-day!! The Loyalty in you still remains.Offcourse, you don’t pay to watch a bad film again and again or go to a restaurant which has already served you with bad food! But when it comes to your football team,you just cannot resist yourself from watching them play again and again even if you’re left crying the whole night after every match.Why does this happen then? Surely,there has to be some sort of a ‘divine-connection’ between a fan and his favourite club that makes him do things which are rather ‘unthinkable’ in normal circumstances! So,being a hardcore Chelsea fan myself,I decided to explore this ‘divine connection’ and much to my amazement, I stumbled upon some very interesting facts.

In an article in Cantonrep, Ronald F Levant,an eminent sports psychologist from the University Of Akron says-“Identifying with your sports teams is one of the ways you can vicariously experience success, and in real life, success is hard,”

He further adds-”We have ups and downs, a lot of things don’t always go our way … especially in this economy.This is kind of an important function to have because if we didn’t have things to buoy us up, life would be really hard”

Allen R Mconnel,a professor of Miami University echoes the same thought and feels that this sort of attachment is very ‘normal’ and humans must have a strong need to feel connected, to be part of something greater.

So,its quite clear. This is a passion in which the football fans find a way of diverting their attention from the daily hardships and manage to find success in the success of their beloved teams. It makes them feel good about themselves. A sense of self-esteem is achieved by the fans!

This is exactly the sort of behaviour which is further explained by the phenomenon called ‘Basking in Reflected Glory’. According to Wikipedia-”Basking in reflected glory (BIRGing) is a self-serving cognition whereby an individual associates himself with successful others such that another’s success becomes their own”. This ‘feel-good’ factor evidently makes the fan drive into such ‘blind’ faith towards his team.

More than the feeling of ‘self-esteem’,its a feeling of ‘being a part of a society or a group’ that satisfies a fan more than anything.A sort of a ‘family feeling’ tends to grow within him and thats exactly what enables him to stay loyal even when his team is not getting the desired success.You simply can’t remain angry with your loved ones for long .Can you? This is exactly what happens with a fan too! He just can’t remain dissapointed with his team for long and inveriabely after a while,he overcomes the set-back and gets behind his team more than ever.

Another phenomenon which plays a vital role here is ‘Deindividuation’. It is a psychological state characterized by partial or complete loss of self-awareness, diffused responsibility, and decreased concern about our own behavior resulting in the abandonment of norms, restraints and inhibitions. Now this so called ‘loss of self awareness’ is the very reason why the father said such things about his son and the Mohun Bagan fan decided sell his own house.It is rather astonishing on how a ‘football club’ can affect the mentality of a normal human being!

As I end this article, I ask myself-”Do I suffer from Deindividuation and Basking in in Reflected glory too? Well, I’ll be frank. Yes I do!!” No wonder my college friends often refers my over-enthusiasm towards football as ‘not normal’.

But recollecting all those good memories I have had while following football over all these years, I wonder isn’t it worthy of a ‘mental condition’ to suffer from? Surely it is! What do you think guys?