I do very little on Sundays. I sleep late. I half-heartedly clean my apartment. I peruse my Netflix Instant queue. Sometimes I nurse a hangover and journey a few blocks north for some fried chicken and a soda. I also spend roughly two hours staring at a laptop screen with a slack jaw, intermittently wiping spit from the corners of my mouth. I do not have a medical condition nor do I indulge in Sunday afternoon peyote binges. I’m an Atlético Madrid supporter, and I am in awe.
Watching Atlético this season was like watching the nightmare gunk between one’s ears leak out, grow limbs, and Google Map its way to the Vicente Calderón. Last season’s hero, Diego Forlán, was undone by exhaustion, injury, poor form, and, possibly, a concerted effort on the part of his teammates to deny him the ball. By season’s end, he was entering games in the seventieth minute, firing a few wayward shots, and loafing around the pitch with an anti-fervor that betrayed a desire to play elsewhere. The back line, ostensibly fortified by the additions of Diego Godín and Filipe Luís, macerated under the pressure of a counterattack or well-placed early cross. Luis Perea routinely misplayed the ball in his own penalty area, resulting in an alarming number of uncontested shots on goal that only turned David De Gea’s boyish visage a sicker shade of red. In the view of Atleti supporters, De Gea’s departure for Manchester United will be motivated not by a desire to compete at the highest level, but to escape a weekly barrage of shots tucked in corners humans can’t reach. In January, management sold the team’s best playmaker, Simão Sabrosa, and acquired two midfielders in his stead: Elias and Juanfran. The former blends in with a stable of unspectacular central midfielders, and the latter barely plays. The rojiblancos will have to survive the qualifying round of the Europa League next season because they repeatedly faltered against middle and bottom of the table competition. I’m contemplating a switch to a stiffer whiskey.
Sports fandom is principally a vicarious experience. This is easily forgotten in the moment when a forward slips behind the defense, buries the ball in the corner of the net, and gestures towards an ecstatic crowd. If you’re in that crowd or watching the game at a bar or sitting in your living room next to a friend, one could forgive you for believing that you’re part of something. You are—I cried happy tears of exhaustion, hugged my girlfriend, and nearly vomited when Landon Donovan scored against Algeria—but you’re a pawn mistaking yourself for a knight.
There is between fan and team a sense of connection that doesn’t actually exist. Fanbases and teams are cogs in the same machine, but those cogs spin independently of one another. When a team is successful, it seems the cogs are interlocked—a fanbase willing its team to victory, the team’s stellar performance in turn fueling the fans—but each entity is actually furiously churning under their own power. This is illuminated when a team performs poorly. You, as a fan, supply your team with support and passion, and they sputter and croak and the machine begins to belch smoke into the air. You are one unlinked cog spinning ineffectually.
This isn’t an issue of players not caring about you. I won’t indulge in a cynicism that claims players are mercenaries. Some are, some are not. This is an issue of the helplessness of fanhood, and the inability of a fan to have any affect on the positive or negative outcome of something in which they have invested time, emotion, and perhaps money. They’re kicking a ball around; you’re yelling at a television. The negative effects of this strange relationship can be meliorated by success, but when our teams disappoint us and render us sad or frustrated, that helplessness begins to grow on and around us like a paralyzing mold. As Málaga slashed through Atlético’s defense a few weekends ago like cleat-wearing samurais, I wriggled soundlessly in front of my laptop, as if trapped in a body-sized gelatin blob.
This frustration is derived from expectations that were built last season. This season’s Atléti squad was arguably more talented than the team that won the Europa League just a year ago. To watch them get bounced from the group stage of that tournament and limp their way to a seventh place finish in La Liga is so infuriating because it doesn’t correspond with the math in fans’ heads. But here’s where we arrive at a conclusion both comforting and harrowing: it probably doesn’t make sense to José Antonio Reyes or Tomáš Ujfaluši either.
Failure is a great leveler in that respect. A championship or successful season is something experienced differently in a locker room than in a sports bar, but commiseration is the same activity anywhere. In society, class lines are most frequently drawn between haves and have-nots. If there was a privileged class of people who could fly, one imagines they would associate almost exclusively with one another. Barcelona are flying. Valencia are flying. Atléti are not. Neither are their fans. When the quantity at the end of an equation is zero, you can throw in anything you want as long as it’s nothing. So in Atlético’s case, the sum of all factors—the fans’ encouragement, the team’s effort, our adoration, their skill, our passion, their passion—is dissatisfaction. As a fan, I want to think we’re in this together, but I don’t want us to be equal.
Colin McGowan is a writer and comedian living in Chicago. You can follow him on Twitter @rhinothickskin.
Read More: Atlético Madrid
by Colin McGowan · June 4, 2011
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I feel as if I am a heroine addict who has just been shown the truth of my addiction and how much happier I’d be if I stopped, and yet I know in the back of my mind I will continue on chasing the high anyways.
I assume that was the point of this piece, right?
Are you the same Colin McGowan who writes on cokemachineglow.com?
@misnomre The homeless man’s Sean Fennessey? Yeah, I’m him.
Cheer up, it could be worse, you could be a fan of Atletico de Mad….oh,wait.
My sincerest condolences. But by Atletico fan standards, they at least won a title during your lifetime – that’s pretty good.
Wonderful piece!
I’m not sure that I like the suggestion that my screaming at the TV has no impact on a game being played a hundred kilometres away. Next you’ll be saying that wearing my lucky shirt for the big games is pointless…
I’ll be honest, I’m hugely disappointed watching Forlan for Atletico (honestly, the only reason they’re appointment viewing for me). I watch every Uruguay match, because he’s always DIEGO FORLAN in those, and only gets normal capitalization in the professional leagues. He’s a great one, but always seems to be greatest on the international stage, rare for a player in this age.
I know for a fact that watching my team play on TV makes them lose important matches. I missed the final of ’88. Couldn’t stand watching because of the nerves and went fishing instead. This was the only final we have ever won. Against better judgement, I watched the final last year. It is all my fault.
as a romanista I relate way to much with this. 🙁
I felt this way as a cub fan and bear fan here in Chicago. Helpless, unable to effect anything related to the team. But I don’t feel that way about the Chicago Fire. I’ve met the team owner, the CEO, the then GM and now head coach…I’ve met the players. I’ve also been at games where the fans number in the hundreds. Where the few hundred of us made the difference between what would resemble a scrimmage in an empty stadium and well…a professional game with low attendance but enough to noise to mask the sound of the players talking to each other. I made enough noise, than when a player scored a penalty he looked over at me as he celebrated and pounded his chest. The distance between us was about 25ft, not thousands of miles over a cathode ray tube.
I’m sure it’s the same in the segunda or tercera in Spain.
Also, I feel the fan is important…without the observers…what is left? 22 men on a pitch playing a game, at a high level but what would be the point? It would have no greater meaning than a kickabout. Although the larger the audience the more alienated and disconnect you feel from your team. On the other hand, the smaller the team the less their is to feel proud about.
Hey Col, cheer up man. I know it sucks now, but it could get better. Take it from a recently liberated City fan, the fortunes of your club could all change. Here’s hoping Atleti acheive success without the need of odious petrodollars!
@A. Ruiz I play with a guy who played on the fire who shall remain nameless. He always thought it was kind of weird how few people came to games. Are there good reasons for this besides what’s on the pitch?
@Colin McGowan Maybe the thinking man’s Sean Fennessey. I just wanted to ask because of my initial shock at finding out two of my most favorite websites in the world share a writer.
And now it gets worse…. the familiarity of 2003-2004….. a stone faced Manzano with cross arms looking at a group of under performers while he gets screamed at by the Vicente Calderon faithful…. but not to worry, we trust him, that’s why we gave him a one year contract. Upstairs Caminero worries about his money laundering problems and doing all he can to keep Diego Simeone out of the Coaching Role based on the allegations of Wife-Swapping the two of them had when they were at the club in the late 90s. Add to that Miguel Angel Gil wondering how much of the Kun Aguero sale he can use to pay back the people of Marbella and you come to the conclusion that 10/11 was a picnic compared to what is about to come.
Luckily, true colchoneros remember 2 years in segunda, money related allegations and woes going back decades, poor player buys, poor marketing moves, poor decisions about our ground….. there is always something. The fans are the glue that put the twinkle in this club and will continue to do so…. nothing new…. Forza Atleti
Beautifully articulate and funny summation of the simultaneous joy and horror of entering into the sanity-damaging pact that is true fandom. One question Colin, how’s that vomit-when-overjoyed tic impacting on your relationship with your long-suffering girlfriend? My own wife objects vehemently when i spew under similar circustances……