Red Devils F.C's Muhammad Mateen Mahmood writes what all his Devil team mates and most certainly all football fanatics feel about this beautiful game called Football
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If born in
the cities of Europe, grown in the culture of local madness, witnessed your
cousin’s fight as homegrown hooligans, wore the fan’s kit since childhood,
travelled with parents to the club’s gallery, danced on the beats of local
rhymes, watched every match in home stadium, drank after every home win,
followed every act of the local heroes, in short spent a life as a Football
Fan; then, it sounds patriotic and the idea looks impressive.
But, being
born in the civic of Pakistan, yes grown in the culture of local madness, only
witnessed your cousins fighting with each other, travelled with parents to
nothing other than school, never knew what Club Football was, only knowing the
concept of Cricket, never drank as being a Muslim, not knowing what being a fan
is; and still spending more than half of life watching club football, living
with a desire to be a club hooligan, having an objective of visiting the clubs
academy, buying every single kit released, always singing the clubs songs,
watching clashes having Barbican or Mountain Dew bottles to have the feeling of
holding a Beer, following every act of every renowned player, in short living
Football; what on earth one will call this, like seriously ??
From David
Beckham’s Free kick to his hairstyle; From Roy Keane’s tackling to the way he
fights; From Eric Cantona’s finishing to his pride; From Ronaldo’s dribbling to
his wife: followed everything. From my own room to the canteen at school; from
the streets of Islamabad to the house full at Cinepex: followed everywhere.
From the holidays in summer till the papers in spring; from the lunch time kick
off to the midweeks special: followed every time. Why??
I have no
reason of doing it why, but I can surely describe how it feels like. I can’t
argue on why this madness but I can surely pay to earn more of this. I can’t
find a clue how it all started but now I can give many reasons why it should
last!
Once I was
being interviewed, when one of the interviewers asked “You have listed football
in almost every column possible, so you play football or what? And I
reflexively replied “Mam, I play football, I watch football, I follow football,
and I live football”. And after the interview I pondered upon that answer and
now that is my tagline.
I attribute
all fanaticism to biological disorders. Why would crocodile dundees play with
dangerous reptiles, why can’t an artist find life besides canvas, what makes a
stamp collector devote his whole life gathering just a cut of paper, what makes
men want to swim with great white sharks except for the face that something
really went wrong somewhere. In my case, I don’t know if something went wrong
with the Red Blood Cells or that some footballing fluid got mixed with the
hemoglobin or what; but I can doubtlessly say:
FOOTBALL ~ IT’S
IN THE BLOOD
Credits: Article Originally posted by Mateen on his blog tripple~em/_ (http://teeno3m.wordpress.com/2011/08/18/it’s-in-the-blood/)
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