There are several things to do in a city at night. Sleep is typically the most judicious, but in a culture that disproportionately rewards crime, overtime and dance parties, it takes a conscious effort to honour your dreaming life.
To reject these blandishments is hard. To do so for football is patently ridiculous. When you have to wake up the next day and go to work with nineteen million other people? When you already live in a city with the worst life expectancy of any Indian metropolitan region? The morning after a nerve-shattering tournament final you are apt to pause on the railway overbridge at the local station and think, not very smartly, my god. No wonder people keep falling off the trains.
There is foolish, and there is spending the hours between one-fifteen and three-fifteen on a weeknight watching a UEFA tournament. When you have done this for a couple of years you begin to take the political and economic mistakes of Europe’s first body of football a little personally. Sometimes I wonder if the “muscular explosion” Alessandro del Piero experienced around the time of the Juve creatine scandal made the same muffled boom! your heart does when your alarm goes to wake you at one-ten on a Wednesday night. If you sandwich a match between deadlines, you might even be able to stare at the ticker that flashes how many kilometres Gennaro Gattuso has run on his decimated knees and feel a dull twinge of kinship.
But this is a very mild form of adventure, even by bourgeois standards. You could be drinking yourself into a lonely stupor; you could be eating a long-refrigerated pizza at midnight; you could be the person framed in a lit-up office window, trying to meet a blown deadline. Watching the Champions League live is even less likely to form part of a Chuck Palahniukian weltschmerz than these things. The Champions’ League is a dash of circus that goes with everyone’s bread. You choose it. At one-fifteen in the night, of course you are Jack’s fragile sense of individual agency.
This is why it’s fun—not every week, not every year, but when it is.
There is something even starrier about the air of Europe after dusk when you watch it on a small, muted screen, trying not to wake the others in the house. You know that other people—your uncles in Kerala, huddled around their TV screen; your friends in other cities (with better life expectancy rates), texting back and forth with you—are watching the same feed as you are, down to the second.
And yet, it can be like going to the movies on your own: the darkness, the silence. It seems alright to respond as though you were in one, drinking in the foreign, stylised tempo of a parallel dimension. You can cry when something wonderful happens, as though Clarence Seedorf just broke out into E’ lucevan le stelle, instead of setting up an equaliser.
It would be unimaginable during late-afternoon Premier League, or primetime Serie A. If you are watching the football World Cup at two in the morning, you get the feeling that you are remotely attending a gigantic, nerve-wracking party in the town square of the world; if you are watching your club play an indifferent match in the pouring rain, even the sound of the rude singing from the stands can be unutterably distant.
The experience of that singularity is rare in the daylight. It is a blanket of silence over the commentary, a lack of willingness to shout directions at the players, a progression into a wakefulness that has no other purpose but to keep the match going.
On red-eye flights to Bombay, descending past the clouds, your first indication of the city will be the flashes of an interrupted trail of mustard yellow light, flickering in and out of sight until it resolves into a giant grid of blazing electricity. It seems like it has sucked in every bit of life from the surrounding blackness of the Arabian Sea, like a photo negative of Mordor.
It is only closer to gravity that the relatively unconscious business districts, the slumbering government offices, the empty schools and the sightless bedroom windows become apparent. In these patches of the night, the world can seem very big. Even as a fellow Milan tragic in, say, Tokyo, is stirring awake, half-wondering how to get through the day without encountering match results until they have a chance to watch their recording, even as someone in Karachi is trying not to boggle about how she stayed up until two forty-five in the morning to watch a stupid match, even as the Pato fans in São Paolo have given up on ending their workday as long as no one at work changes the channel, being alone at this hour can make you feel like the last person in the world. In this soft city, the parts obscured in the time-lapse rhythms of daytime, the light flickering from an LED screen maroons you on a very small island. In the end, regardless of the game’s outcome, you are left with a sensation not unlike waking up in the moment before dawn. Someone somewhere must be dreaming this.
Inspired by Alan’s Morning in America.
It’s 56.8 years. I know.
(Perhaps the great Indian cricket revolution will have its wellsprings in the population of men and women who are struggling to watch this World Cup on their pixellated screens well after midnight.)
Read More: Champions League, Indian Notes
by Supriya Nair · March 7, 2011
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Wonderfully written…… My favourite memory of watching late night Champions League football is when I used to stay with my parents in Kolkata…. and I had to silently watch the matches in mute without turning on the lights. Watching TV that late in the night in a “malaria zone” was a strict no-no and I would often walk up to the TV from my bedroom about 15 times during the matches to check the scores.
The last 15 minutes at Highbury watching us play Real Madrid remains my best memory ever. Seeing Zidane and Bergkamp on the pitch for the last 10 odd minutes was just sublime. The most spectactular of nil – nils watched in utter darkness wherein I could not even to shout.
Thoroughly enjoy your pieces so much so there aren’t words to express such appreciation; which is good for the both of us, as I don’t have to degrade myself by trying to (in)adequately sum it up, & you don’t have to painfully endure it.
Take care, write more & enjoy your day!
The last match I remember watching at that 1.15 dark time is Spurs vs Milan.Being a Milanista,I immediately regretted it.The next day,I found myself in school with worn out eyes that constantly tried to close its shutter.Not a great day at the school.
I liked your subtle reference to Fight Club , nicely done .
I wanted to respond after reading “Morning in America” itself, along similar lines, so I’m glad to see it’s been put out there in far better prose than I could have ever managed.
We (me and my fellow texting-through-the-night friends as you’ve mentioned. Very good to see we’re not the only bunch) have discussed this question no end and have finally concluded that it’s the Anthem. If your college years are spent in a residential institute where everyone gathers in the common room for a match, then you can have the volume on full blast and no one really cares. And after all the pre-match punditry and prattling has ended, we get down to the real deal – that Anthem, the flag-waving, the handshakes… goosebumps.
It gets even better when your dad wakes up in between and watches the second half with you while relating football stories from old times.
Supriya, will you marry me?!
As a fellow keralite, though in the states, I admire the effort made to watch a great game…
This reminds me of when I was in the UK and became obsessed with baseball. There is something magical (and by it’s very nature dreamlike) about watching sport in the early/late hours.
I remember with fondness howling and dancing in the pre-dawn twilight when Iniesta scored the match winner at Stamford Bridge 2 years ago, waking up half the building.
Less fondly is the day at work after the Arsenal/Barcelona final a few years back. Me, in a semi-comatose state, wearing my arsenal shirt. My boss, with not an ounce of sympathy, cackling and gloating.
The worst is when you don’t have coverage at home, and you have to find some place that is open at 3am and has the telecast.
Oy, the bags under my eyes have bags under them just thinking about it.
Perfect. Bravo, Supriya Nair.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mX7ugJ5NM8
Beautiful – and accurate. While I was unhappy that Everton didn’t qualify for Europe this season, it meant not having to get up at 4am to watch the matches in cornflake loneliness here in Shanghai. The occasional midweek match is bad enough and is enlightened only by knowing you’ll get a burst of texts from friends at home, win or lose.
Everyone has done this, sitting with a blanket muffling the sound, fearing electronic overheating, quietly trying to eat chips whose bags crackle very, very loudly in the middle of the night. Good stuff. 🙂
Would saying “Brothers in Arms” on Women’s day, make me guilty of some sin that Supriya Nair is well equipped to invent? 🙂
Loved the article and the captured imagery of the lonely football fan, especially in a country that chooses to show the same cricket match on all channels, mowing down the scheduled football games awaited with anticipation throughout a long work week, with the same disdain as Ralph Fiennes shooting Jews post his early morning piss in Schindler’s list.
Good evocative prose there, Supriya. I’ve watched dozens of late European matches as well but the one I remember most is the Champion’s League final of 2006. I had a major exam the next morning but was too heartbroken to sleep in the few hours remaining afterwards.
Your article reminded me of this quote by Burial:
“When I’m awake all night, sometimes I see the people and the city waking up around me. I feel a little bit moody at them for stepping into my night-time. What I want is that feeling when you’re in the rain, or a storm. It’s a shiver at the edge of your mind, an atmosphere of hearing a sad, distant sound, but it seems closer – like it’s just for you. Like hearing rain or a whale-song, a cry in the dark, the far cry.”
Wonderful writing.
Makes me remember my teenage angst days, where my way of “rebelling” was to stay up late to watch UEFA matches. (When rebelling, choose an activity which is high on irritation factor on parents but harmless) The surge of adrenaline and joy when Sheringham and Solksjaer scored in the final two minutes! Bliss! The silent screams of joy at the whole experience of it… And in my A-level year too (final year before university), a totally unexpected bonus to help me through the rest of the year.
Thank you.
Spectacular imagery! Lovely reading, as always. As a Chelsea fan (*ducks instinctively*), my mind kept rewinding to that night at The Bridge when Iniesta scored a stoppage-time screamer to put Barca into the final. It took every ounce of will-power to not scream and wake my parents who were sleeping nearby (and the neighborhood in general). Strange kind of thrill, but not unpleasant.
On a side note, is this the first time an ROP writer has received a marriage proposal through one of their pieces?
Can totally relate…taking the day off tomorrow so that I can sleep in after the Barca-Arsenal game.
Nailed it.
Wonderful…
I had the same experience with American Sports, staying awake to ungodly hours in the night to watch games between teams i do not know in sports i don’t particularly care. I’ve grown so fond of Late-late night sports, that i even arrange my holidays around events like the Australian and US Open in Tennis that will keep me company to the early hours.
I’ve always found that sports, at this time of night, becomes richer. Probably it’s the contrast to the emptyness of the city around me, and the nights silences.
Either Way, it’s wonderful this post!
‘like a photo negative of Mordor’ … now that’s some writing.
beautiful.
@Sheedy Evertonian in Shanghai named for the greatest left winger of the early nineties? Where art thou brother?
Excellent piece supriya
@Abhishek That sounds very nice. I can imagine it in some form or other exactly in my head.
I remember being a teenager in Germany and watching the Super Bowl in the wee hours of the morning on Armed Forces Network, having to venture to school only a few hours later. Thankfully, most everyone else at school had experienced the same. For the four years I was there it was the Buffalo Bills’ four losses in a row that became worse each year, so that by the last two it was beyond over by half time and I could get a little more sleep.
Yawning my way into the George & Dragon pub in Seattle during the ’02 WC at 4am was an experience to remember fondly. At least no one cared how loud it got. Oh, the things we footy fans will do just for a match, anywhere, anytime.
Fantastic article – Probably the first Indian woman I have seen who has a passion for football. May your tribe increase !!!!
@Sharad Thank you. With all due respect, may you and your tribe begin to generalise less.
Mine are more like drinking til 3 or 4am on a Friday, struggling to wake up at 7.30am to watch Manchester United on a Saturday!!
Excellent article!
@JP How goes? I seem to recall you fell asleep on Saturday night.
@Sharad hun there are a lot more of us than you think.