What if… you were interested in the fans?
There is hardly ever this question: what is the fan interested in, what makes him special, how do you become one, what would he wish for, what does he enjoy, what binds him to the game? If this ever comes into focus, then with fireworks, riots, fights, freaking out, aggression, which one attributes to him, but which one only shakes his head at and asks oneself: how can we get rid of it?
Generally speaking, people somehow like football. Even if it’s partly a tradition they follow: they like the atmosphere in the stadium, the mood, they play a little themselves and in that respect admire all those who can do it so much better. They also want to find somewhere, sometime and somehow a place where they can live out a few emotions, even let themselves go. They want to be among their own kind and may be looking for a group to join.
This point “generating emotions” is a very central aspect. If you deal with gambling addiction, you will definitely find that one of the reasons for this is that there is a certain lack of events in your own life, but you can easily counteract this “playfully”. As soon as you start betting money on certain events, a certain adrenaline rush is guaranteed. If the feeling of happiness of winning sets in, one tries to reconstruct this wonderful feeling. But you’re also willing to accept setbacks, because it’s the roller coaster ride that gives you the kick. Always winning would not work at all and would probably soon become boring. What would you do it for? Winning would be the default feeling and not one to chase after.
It would be similar with a fan. However, the problem lies a little deeper, which is what we are talking about here. Elevations, sadness, setbacks, despair, escalating joy and enthusiasm, anger, annoyance, resentment, envy, sympathy, shared excitement, frustration, freaking out, cheering, hugging and hugging, dancing for joy. All of this can take place in an interplay and transform one into the other in seconds. Certainly part of the motivation to go to a stadium.
Good. That would still not be understood as a “problem”. Though thinking about it can pay off one way or the other? Can you always compare yourself to it? How do you feel at a football game? Do you have emotions, do you look for them, what kind are they?
The problem, to be narrowed down, is that people are looking for some kind of outlet somewhere. You have to live something out somewhere, join somewhere, feel secure somewhere. OK. It makes sense to do this in football. Also and still good. There is this fan culture, it’s easy to find a club, a club from the region, a pub where people watch and where fans meet. You would be there. However, if you watch a game, then basically not much happens on the pitch. There is hardly ever a goal and if so, even for the wrong people. After that there is no turning back. The game is lost. At the same time you feel a lot of injustice and whenever a striker is free, the flag is up and if a player wants to shoot, he is hindered and the ball misses.
The assertion is this: the lack of events on the pitch, in a football game, forces you to be a fan even more. With all its positive effects, but the unpleasant ones are just as important.
You’re looking for something that has something to do with these emotions, to live them out, and at the same time a certain sense of community. You can find it here. Football is alive, football is booming, you can hear, read and see something everywhere. But it’s like the emperor’s new clothes: actually there’s nothing there. But you should be enthusiastic and you can also see how many people are. So there must be something to it? What is he wearing now, the Kaiser, I can’t see anything? It doesn’t matter, I’ll celebrate with you.
In this way, marginal events are gradually being staged within the fan scene. Everything on the pitch is dull, tired, lame, uneventful, unfair. Nothing happens and if it does, the game is over. So you start to deal with these marginal events. There are often such effects to be observed: the fans often celebrate themselves. An example would also be to bare the upper body, even in the cold season. You somehow want to experience something and that doesn’t exist on the pitch. Does not matter. You celebrate, you get along with each other, you have experienced something, even if it wasn’t the game itself.
It’s not about the statement that “your own club” would always lose. There is a table, there are expectations, there are results, from your own team and from the competition, you follow a development, you are happy about a new purchase and have hopes, you lose a player and have fears, you appreciate the coach or keep him nothing from him, you’re mad at the board and whatnot. There’s a lot to deal with all around. It’s just not the gameplay itself.
You may be looking forward to the journey, which begins early on Saturday morning, you are looking forward to the train ride with your boys, you go through the entire history of the club on the train, you remember great successes or sad moments, relegations, defeats, but one is among one’s own kind, which creates much of the joy one seeks. The game itself? Well, you have to have a lot of patience and you have to take the defeat into account when you go away. The moments of happiness? few and far between. It wasn’t worth it for that alone.
Repeating the claim: the fan relationship becomes so intense because there isn’t much to experience in the game. You are forced to identify yourself unconditionally with a club in order to be able to endure the game yourself, or you may not even notice it. Sure, a goal was scored, everyone jumps up, cheers, hugs, it’s a pleasure to be there. But how and why and what happened in the first place? Was it a nice move or a ball ball, an own goal? Does not matter. Ball is in – out with the joy.
The close relationship with the fans means that you are unconditionally committed to this club. But that also means that other fans become enemies. Here, too, there is a generated marginal event. The injustices that you cannot articulate and are not even allowed to articulate – only among yourself, but otherwise? “We’ve been ratted on!”, “Ha, the chickens are laughing!” – partly generate this aggression, which can make you want to direct this anger at someone and get rid of it somewhere. Who is better suited than the fan of the opposing team right now? An enmity is built up here, which is reflected in a readiness to use violence. Whether staged by this or that, because of this or that perceived injustice, but also a longer history, which the new fans only know from stories, but confide in and subordinate themselves to. Dortmund and Schalke? There is only an either – or. War or at least a substitute for war.
What if… you were interested in the fans?
There is hardly ever this question: what is the fan interested in, what makes him special, how do you become one, what would he wish for, what does he enjoy, what binds him to the game? If this ever comes into focus, then with fireworks, riots, fights, freaking out, aggression, which one attributes to him, but which one only shakes his head at and asks oneself: how can we get rid of it?
Generally speaking, people somehow like football. Even if it’s partly a tradition they follow: they like the atmosphere in the stadium, the mood, they play a little themselves and in that respect admire all those who can do it so much better. They also want to find somewhere, sometime and somehow a place where they can live out a few emotions, even let themselves go. They want to be among their own kind and may be looking for a group to join.
This point “generating emotions” is a very central aspect. If you deal with gambling addiction, you will definitely find that one of the reasons for this is that there is a certain lack of events in your own life, but you can easily counteract this “playfully”. As soon as you start betting money on certain events, a certain adrenaline rush is guaranteed. If the feeling of happiness of winning sets in, one tries to reconstruct this wonderful feeling. But you’re also willing to accept setbacks, because it’s the roller coaster ride that gives you the kick. Always winning would not work at all and would probably soon become boring. What would you do it for? Winning would be the default feeling and not one to chase after.
It would be similar with a fan. However, the problem lies a little deeper, which is what we are talking about here. Elevations, sadness, setbacks, despair, escalating joy and enthusiasm, anger, annoyance, resentment, envy, sympathy, shared excitement, frustration, freaking out, cheering, hugging and hugging, dancing for joy. All of this can take place in an interplay and transform one into the other in seconds. Certainly part of the motivation to go to a stadium.
Good. That would still not be understood as a “problem”. Though thinking about it can pay off one way or the other? Can you always compare yourself to it? How do you feel at a football game? Do you have emotions, do you look for them, what kind are they?
The problem, to be narrowed down, is that people are looking for some kind of outlet somewhere. You have to live something out somewhere, join somewhere, feel secure somewhere. OK. It makes sense to do this in football. Also and still good. There is this fan culture, it’s easy to find a club, a club from the region, a pub where people watch and where fans meet. You would be there. However, if you watch a game, then basically not much happens on the pitch. There is hardly ever a goal and if so, even for the wrong people. After that there is no turning back. The game is lost. At the same time you feel a lot of injustice and whenever a striker is free, the flag is up and if a player wants to shoot, he is hindered and the ball misses.
The assertion is this: the lack of events on the pitch, in a football game, forces you to be a fan even more. With all its positive effects, but the unpleasant ones are just as important.
You’re looking for something that has something to do with these emotions, to live them out, and at the same time a certain sense of community. You can find it here. Football is alive, football is booming, you can hear, read and see something everywhere. But it’s like the emperor’s new clothes: actually there’s nothing there. But you should be enthusiastic and you can also see how many people are. So there must be something to it? What is he wearing now, the Kaiser, I can’t see anything? It doesn’t matter, I’ll celebrate with you.
In this way, marginal events are gradually being staged within the fan scene. Everything on the pitch is dull, tired, lame, uneventful, unfair. Nothing happens and if it does, the game is over. So you start to deal with these marginal events. There are often such effects to be observed: the fans often celebrate themselves. An example would also be to bare the upper body, even in the cold season. You somehow want to experience something and that doesn’t exist on the pitch. Does not matter. You celebrate, you get along with each other, you have experienced something, even if it wasn’t the game itself.
It’s not about the statement that “your own club” would always lose. There is a table, there are expectations, there are results, from your own team and from the competition, you follow a development, you are happy about a new purchase and have hopes, you lose a player and have fears, you appreciate the coach or keep him nothing from him, you’re mad at the board and whatnot. There’s a lot to deal with all around. It’s just not the gameplay itself.
You may be looking forward to the journey, which begins early on Saturday morning, you are looking forward to the train ride with your boys, you go through the entire history of the club on the train, you remember great successes or sad moments, relegations, defeats, but one is among one’s own kind, which creates much of the joy one seeks. The game itself? Well, you have to have a lot of patience and you have to take the defeat into account when you go away. The moments of happiness? few and far between. It wasn’t worth it for that alone.
Repeating the claim: the fan relationship becomes so intense because there isn’t much to experience in the game. You are forced to identify yourself unconditionally with a club in order to be able to endure the game yourself, or you may not even notice it. Sure, a goal was scored, everyone jumps up, cheers, hugs, it’s a pleasure to be there. But how and why and what happened in the first place? Was it a nice move or a ball ball, an own goal? Does not matter. Ball is in – out with the joy.
The close relationship with the fans means that you are unconditionally committed to this club. But that also means that other fans become enemies. Here, too, there is a generated marginal event. The injustices that you cannot articulate and are not even allowed to articulate – only among yourself, but otherwise? “We’ve been ratted on!”, “Ha, the chickens are laughing!” – partly generate this aggression, which can make you want to direct this anger at someone and get rid of it somewhere. Who is better suited than the fan of the opposing team right now? An enmity is built up here, which is reflected in a readiness to use violence. Whether staged by this or that, because of this or that perceived injustice, but also a longer history, which the new fans only know from stories, but confide in and subordinate themselves to. Dortmund and Schalke? There is only an either – or. War or at least a substitute for war.
Basically, it would be easy to visualize these things and include them. First of all, you have to create justice in the game itself and then you have to ensure event variety. If you had the chance in the game itself – this applies to everyone, even the neutral spectator — to generate all the emotions mentioned in this roller coaster ride, planning for and accepting positive and negative ones, then the fan riots would already be on the other side of the field significantly minimized, since the potential is withdrawn from them. On the one hand because of the fairness, on the other hand because of the high entertainment value, even if disappointment or frustration can also occur, but in a healthy proportion.
So the bottom line would be: if one orients oneself to all the suggestions in the overall text, the fan problem would very soon only be a “historical phenomenon”.
