dolorum ipsum quia.
"Los triunfos, siendo muy importantes, no son lo único que demuestra la grandeza de los equipos. Hemos ganado la Liga, porque hemos sabido sufrir, unirnos y crecernos, para que, además de ser el mejor Club del mundo, seamos también el mejor equipo del mundo."
-Ramón Calderón
Y que es pasión: Real Madrid CF 2 - 0 FC Barcelona; 22 October 2006.
To fully understand, one must experience it first. It's a transubstantiation of sorts: each pass of the ball between the eleven men in the colour I am living and breathing becomes something I am a part of. Each goal becomes mine, ours. Each trophy has my fingerprints on it, even though you can't see. Each time they (we) fail, fall one step too short, that miss, that loss is our sorrow and we can taste it as bitterly as if we were the ones crumpling to the grass in a mess of tears.
I do not understand when people say that they can just 'give up' football. Perhaps they have experienced this and find it too intense. Perhaps they are not ready for the bleak lows as well as those well-deserved highs that we, as fans, no matter how far we are from the stadium, from our temple and the place we worship and the place we see ourselves become one with the squad, have fought for as hard as any player. Each fist they raise into the air is like our fist in the air. Each grimace, each swear word, is just like our own. We reflect our players; football reflects life; it is an art, the sweeping arc of someone's leg, the unpredictability of what will happen next, the intense inability to just look away and spare yourself the horror of this possible loss. Losses hurt more than anything, but they fade in the light of victory. It is always worth it to wait for that cure. It is inevitable that matches will be lost and they will slip from your grasp, but it is equally inevitable that silverware is only just out of your reach and if you hope and wish hard enough, your collective hand will reach out for it. More than once this season I found myself physically ill because of the terror and the stress of those eleven boys. More than once tearing at my hair and screaming at the television for something magic to happen. And you know what? It did. Finally. After years and years of nothing, of the trophy room stopping with that last league trophy under Del Bosque, something came of passion. Something came of my feelings, those of every fan, and those of the players (fans themselves) who resolved in their locker-room secrecy, with inspirational Italian-tinged speeches as guidance, to succeed. Not always to win, but never to lose again if it could be helped.
And we helped. Every banner that the Ultras Sur unveiled in defence of honour said it: Madrid. Our Madrid, our white stadium, our boys, our collective passion and our fidelity transcending language barriers. When people say they don't want to follow football I think, maybe they simply have not experienced this. Maybe they do not know what it is like to have this vitriolic hatred for your closest competition and a love beyond explanation for your men because you are faithful, because you hope and breathe and wish for something glorious. It is more religious than anything I have seen because it is intergenerational, it is painful, it is sheer, pure, gratification and hands slicing through the air which is different-coloured because, although we are spread out across the globe, there are eleven men on that pitch and they are our army, and we have faith in them. We. As a mass of people, sweating and swearing and jostling to see something that will be far more than magical: despite the flaws, the stitches across Diarra's face, Cicinho's long injury, Ruud's early departure in the final game, despite David Beckham literally beginning to cry with pain as he took those free kicks and corners, it shall be perfect. Grass-stained, sore, limping perfection, like the number ten. We expect nothing less after so long.
And when we do not win we remember why we love: because we must. It is imperative, and maybe close-minded of me to think this, but I can't help it because it sucks the spectator in, draws them in like a spider's-web. This is an inescapable passion, the perfect prison, so when I hear that people are considering giving it up I think to myself, they must be mad not to want this. Maybe they are not masochistic enough. Maybe not even human. Not to want to wait. To be so impatient as to think trophies come every single year, to be so shocked that squads fluctuate but you love the team because it is That Team That You Love. Football is not measured in seasons. It is measured in periods of years and years on end. There were the heroes of the late Fifties, short and squat and developing post-war football into something new and almost unbelievable. There were the others with their shorts too short and their smiles too big. There were the Galácticos, with their star-studded names, fancy haircuts, and their inability to produce. And they have all left over these years. All of them. Nary a face remains; the odd ones do, lingering around the touchline or Valdebebas but it's so, so different now. The faces are different colours and shapes and sizes, but when they line up, there are numbers on white shirts, and that is certainly good enough for me. Despite the change, the crises, the anger... your squad changes, but your club is still The Club For You. It is Yours and if you let it go, perhaps it was never Yours in the first place. Perhaps it has escaped you and locked you out of its confines and you are cursed not to be in love. Perhaps that's it.
Through those many many years there was suffering and exultation and there was the European Cup; and for all of what Liverpool fans say, for all of what Milan fans say, that trophy is what it is because it is Real Madrid's. My fingerprints are there, too, on our trophies in their glass cases in the Santiago Bernabéu. That trophy is Madrid's, although it has been passed and shared across Europe through so many different hands, because they made it prestigious and they made it magical and nine different squads have won it, but The Club has won it nine times. I've never touched the cup and probably neither have you, but your fingerprints are on it because if you know what this means and if you love club football, you would almost die for it and that is why every fan wants it, every fan needs it, and Madrid made it that way. There has been so much suffering for this team since it was last won, since Zidane scored perhaps one of the most flawless goals of all time at Hampden Park (made famous, of course, due to the 1960 European Cup final: 7-3 to Real Madrid); we are waiting. So when you say you want to abandon football and have become bored with it, I wonder - are you simply impatient? Can you not bear to go a season without a trophy? Can you not bear to reflect on a team's ability to change, like some kind of chameleon that still remains the same colour but changes features and style and flair? Methodical and surgical and slow one season, then blinding and quicksilver and inconsistent the next, but glorious. And by that virtue, beautiful, like polished silver.
For all of the fleeing faces and the new ones, Real Madrid is still (my, our) Real Madrid. It is a different Madrid than Di Stéfano's Madrid, than the Madrid of the Sixties and the Seventies and the Eighties and of course the ones I know like Hierro. But it is still, at its very core, with that badge on its chest, the same flag and the same pride that those players carry. So please, believe. Believe that a team is somewhat like a phoenix: it dwindles at the end of an era, but it is reborn anew because that is simply the way things are. This is so idealised and romantic, and I'm fully aware of it, but of course, this is all true. It's true not because I say it is, but because I have felt it in clenched fists and in hot tears and my weak heart. Because I want that trophy more than anything; next year, Real Madrid could fall to tenth place in La Liga and if they took home that big silver cup, I couldn't care less. Oh, it would hurt to lose so much, but it would be the sweetest in the end if this pain could amount to something like that. Idealism hurts, but it reminds us why we love the game: eventually we will be rewarded as we want, and I want the European Cup. I need it. My heart is set upon it for this season, and I'm fully aware that a mis-step or a missed shot on goal could spell the end of this dream. And in the face of that, I want it more, knowing I'll have my heart broken all over again.
It isn't some kind of hobby, you know, where you pick it up and drop it and come back where you've left off, like some slowly-knitted scarf you'll never wear. If you think this is what it is like to be a fan, you have developed a fatal misunderstanding. To be a fan is more like a torrid love affair, the sort that you will never forget and never end. Your club is your mistress, but she is not a whore. You want her, and the world wants her (or so it would seem) but even if you stand in a crowd of thousands, screaming her name, she is yours alone and for the man next to you, wondering how he ever made it here, how he ever afforded this trip but through sweat and blood and stretching to make it all come together, she is his mistress too, and he does not want to share this passion because he believes nobody else can feel it. But we do. Millions of people feel it. And when they lose, he will cry, this grown man with a life and with responsibilities, not only because he is afraid for his most precious mistress but also because he is thrilled at the knowledge that one day it will be quite different. One day (I hope in Moscow in the spring of 2008) it will reverse itself on its head, and the rapture will not intensify but rather brighten. And on that day he will cry again because people in love are inclined towards irrationality, and he has never been in love like this. Maybe 2008 will not be our year. Maybe 2009. Maybe 2010, even. Maybe longer. And fans of other clubs are fervently dreaming of the same thing, I know; we want our tenth and maybe they want their first or second or third. A small number, while we seek double digits. But we all know what it feels like to want it, to rage and scream and hate, but also to smile and to love, and to wait for the team to be reborn into something different, not necessarily better, but loved equally, as its predecessor. Íker Casillas began to cry with relief because he had waited so long; the shadows under Raúl's eyes lessened a little. They know what it means to wait, and so did everyone else; but if you are suffering for another club and you find it 'tiresome' and you cannot understand, then I truly pity you. There are new boys and old ones, but jubilation awaits no matter the faces it will prompt to smile. Heartbreak is always just over the edge of the cliff, and we teeter on that edge, but it is the opportunity to fall backwards and save ourselves and clasp that tenth (the perfect number), that perfect trophy in our hands from thousands of miles away that merits that risk in the end.
If you do not understand this, and you say you can quit it, then perhaps you should. Escape the addiction while you can. Forget this woman in her low-cut dress, forget her and move on to something else if you cannot tolerate the thought of your mistress being occasionally frail or fickle or tired. Leave her. There are millions waiting to take your place and they think nothing of you. If you've fallen out of step, I am so sorry for you. But they know just as I do, at least, what makes the heart beat faster (that it is as natural as breathing), and their hearts all beat in unison with mine, no matter their colour.