9.45 PM, Sunday night outside a popular movie studio in Mumbai. People, hundreds of people, young people, not getting any younger people, boys, some girls, a swarm of them waiting not so patiently. You couldn’t really blame them. The air was thick and humid, like inside the kitchen of a Chinese restaurant.
Entering the gates of this studio, there is something you must know while we explain this setting to you. A football match is about to begin. It will take place in London, roughly 11,000 kilometers away from the city of seven islands. Yet people are feverish about a football match between Chelsea and Manchester City.
Just outside the air-conditioned hall that will display the match, I met a young man named Mayur Mandlik who seemed really excited yet calm “The president and the vice president are present too if you want to speak to them.”
Mayur is one of the core team members of the Chelsea India Supporters' Club. He has been supporting The Blues since a year before Jose Mourinho arrived. The season when current Leicester City boss, Claudio Ranieri was at the helm.
One player, in particular, caught his eye - Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink. Not completely well versed with fan clubs as many of you may be, I asked him to spill some details on it. “We are a pan India supporters club and we’re present in more than 20 cities. We started back in 2006 and today we’re celebrating our tenth anniversary. We’ve made a lot of friends who are now friends for life”.
There’s alcohol available too. “Does it get difficult to manage this when the fans get too passionate? I ask Mayur. “It does sometimes when we have joint screenings. With Liverpool, sometimes with United. So we have to keep an eye out, you know?”
He continued, “The fans are sensible enough but sometimes when a player scores a goal and they celebrate, some of the fans don’t know what to do. They might fight. So we just keep an eye. We have security specifically in different areas”.
This particular supporters club is officially associated with Chelsea Football Club and are a Gold Tier fan club. Every fan club has different levels- Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum. “You need to get a specific number of members to get to a specific level. This year we have numbers that can get us the Platinum tag but there are only 32 supporter-clubs in the world that can get the Platinum tag. So in spite of having more numbers, we’re not eligible. Hopefully next year”, he says.
A combination of hope and pandemonium filled the screening hall throughout the match. But silence? Not even for a micro-second.
Unfortunately for the hundreds of supporters, the night was one to forget. Kun Aguero scored a hat-trick as Manchester City comprehensively beat Chelsea 3-0. Not the best way to celebrate an anniversary. But in an era where form is fickle and support even more so, this particular fan club ensures that passion overrides everything.
