What’s attractive about competing, sometimes ad nauseam, with fans who, moreover, belong to your same city or region? Isn’t it an expression of a misunderstood love? For example, the last meeting between the two great Asturian clubs ended in a brawl between players due to an overestimation of the worst features of local provincialism. The matter ended with several sanctioned rojiblancos who will miss the next game, right in the middle of a very critical sporting situation. Is that loving your club? No, that’s being Will Smith in shorts.
These neighborhood pickets are assumed as if they were a natural law or a mathematical formula from which we cannot escape. It also gets bigger thanks to the huge hours of shouted television and also through social networks where the emotional component is very powerful. The most striking thing is to see how the players, under the watchful eye of the fans, repeat like a mantra, the days before a derby, which is not just another game. For them it is a way (real or fictitious) to show that they love their team very much, curiously, detesting the other. It seems that the more you despise the other, the more you appreciate what is yours. So, “Fake it, till you make it”.
Anfield fans sing in honor of Cristiano.
PHIL NOBLE (REUTERS)
And it is that showing love in a constructive way requires effort, head, perseverance, intelligence, sensitivity, patience and vision of the future. It is not available to everyone. However, despising, attacking or insulting is very easy. Many hide behind love to hate. That is to say, as I love my club, I hate the other -which is precisely in my own region-.
But as human beings, from time to time, we are wonderful animals, two days ago, in the Northwest derby (Liverpool-Manchester United), we live one of the most beautiful moments of the year. Everything Anfieldin minute 7, sang the legendary “You’ll never walk alone” a Cristiano Ronaldo for the loss of his son. He is a player from the rival team, that is the greatness of that derby. Loving is smart.