Is Mo’ Salah’s improbable brilliance a rupture in the European-elite-club-football-spacetime-continuum?
Across sports, genres and eras, there is something that snakes its tendrils around the psychology of obsession and unites fans across the world – time. Or, to be more precise, the amount of time and space (physical and/or emotional) that the object of adoration takes up in one’s life – whether it be the teenage goth with the black nail paint or the suburban mom jamming out to Bruno Mars, the tattooed shirtless ultra on the Curva Sud at the San Siro or the father taking his young child out to their first East Bengal match at the Salt Lake Stadium in Kolkata, strip away the outer layers and they’re united by the joy they feel – and they’ve all caught the bug.
And let’s be clear, football fandom is very much an infectious disease, involuntarily absorbed, passed on amongst family and friends, and, more often than not, quite uncomfortable. As Nick Hornby wrote in Fever Pitch, the seminal book on football obsession, “I fell in love with football as I was later to fall in love with women: suddenly, inexplicably, uncritically, giving no thought to the pain or disruption it would bring with it.”
And just like romantic love, we persist with football, despite the existential anxiety of bad dates, despite the spirit-crushing tedium of a Sunderland-Stoke City 0-0 draw, or the heartbreaks and the crying yourself to sleep (after a breakup or a Champions League quarterfinal exit), only to wake up the next morning and go again, believing beyond all reasonable hope that this year, this year, it’s gonna be our year, where we’ll meet the One or finally win another league title. Why do we do it? For two reasons, mainly: