The Pursuit of Happiness: A Real Madrid POV

Note: Other than the title, the following editorial has zero resemblance with the Will Smith motion picture with the same title.

Stressed and hostile, Real Madrid players are yet to find their lost asset back. With most of the European players leaving their mark on the Euros, a lot was anticipated from the whites. Fans, including me, were already confident of defending the title in the forthcoming season. But it seems it didn’t work out as we would have liked.

The team now is alleged of being, you know, anything but Barcelona. The players are now all of a sudden over rated, the manager is not worthy of leading the team and so forth. It is a hard time; hard for the team, harder for the fans.

When you are not winning, everyone is against you. The media have already crossed the line, and reporting that a certain fight involving the Spanish and Portuguese players in the locker room is an every-day occurrence. Cristiano Ronaldo is always an easy target, after all, playing an antagonist in a Lionel Messi romantic can never fail to bore fruit.

Amidst all of the chaos, where do the fans stand?

Are we happy? No, of course we are not. You know what, happiness is a cheap term. The real trouble that we have been facing is instability, and fans don’t even care. A loss against Malaga after the captain being benched pretty much made it clear that the fans want Jose Mourinho away from the team, the same fans who few months ago rated him higher than Alex Ferguson.

They disgust me.

Rome was not built in a day, so won’t a Real Madrid. Do you know how much Sir Alex had to face before he became the manager he is now? Three seasons with United and the fans already wanted him out. The same people who often curse Perez for being a mercenary for sacking managers and selling players now want the same. What does that make us? It makes us hypocrites of the highest order.

A bar of chocolate, a long soak in the bath, a snooze in the middle of the afternoon and Real Madrid back on the winning track – these are apparently the things that make me happy. But the feeling isn’t quite right. Things are quite messed up now, and what we should really do is: Show some real balls and support the team. Let’s give Jose one more chance to redeem himself. He has proven many times that he knows how to change a season on its head. He can do it once again.

Happiness is an illusion if forced and in fact if you push it really hard, it will evade you. The reason why happiness seems to evade the millions of people searching for it is because they are looking in the wrong place. Changing a manager or selling your best player is not the key to success. You build a team brick by brick.

“I do not fear for my job,” Mourinho addressed the media. “This is football. Everyone knows that people have short memories in this game.”

I don’t consider those people, who curse the team, the players and the manager, fans at all. There is constructive criticism and then you have brain dead abuse and people I see around me belong to the latter category. Football doesn’t work like that. It is not a stock market company where you get instant success and failure as well. There are ups and downs, a lot of them and it is supposed to be how you become a fan.

You ought to get behind your team, not be ignorant and insolent towards them. It is not a freaking FIFA game, where everything is upmarket and fancy. There is more to football than a few buttons which you press to win a game.

When you support a team, there are things more important than just tweeting #HALAMADRID or changing your facebook profile picture to a Cristiano Ronaldo photo.

You have to know what the team has been through, what it takes to be the best. Certainly, we have seen Manchester United and Barcelona win trophies, a lot of it in recent years, but football didn’t start a decade ago. Teams go through phases, and we can’t take back everything that players have done for the fans.

I am not here to talk about other fans, I don’t really care what they have to say about Real Madrid. They don’t know what the team has been through, what our players are capable of. I am calling out to the fans who believe in the white magic, and I urge you not to be selfish and stand for a greater good. The team needs us for a morale uplift and we owe it to them. The night is darkest just before dawn, and I promise you, it is coming.