Reflections of a football loving fool

Fool me. I should have slept last night. I had good reason to. Terrible congestion, acute sinusitis, you are an idiot for not coming sooner....these are some of the epithets my friend/ENT trainee doctor admonished me with when I finally dragged myself to the hospital yesterday.

Having waded through the absolute madness that has been the last month or so, set some affairs right, got myself a job and other such nondescript and not so nondescript things, it felt strangely anti-climatic to fall sick on the very first day. What followed was a week of huddling miserably under blankets and croaking for warm water. Until last night...

So what happened last night you may ask? Before I begin to tell you, you should probably know (whoever you are, one or two, I am infinitely grateful to any reader of this blog) that this post is a deviation from the way I usually write. Today I do not spin stories, today, my poor There'sh a moshkeeto in my foog will be subject to my rant.

So. Last night, I eschewed sleep (armed with a battery of medicine and a previously snatched bit of sleep for a few hours, oh I was so prepared) to watch the return leg of the Derby Della Madonnina. I was on a high, as much from the excitement as from all the drugs I was being forced to take.

The knowledge that I would have to face the wrath of the parental unit left me completely unfazed. My conviction was that much. Milan would win. We were on fire! We were untouchable! I had salivated breathlessly (through the fever) for what I had been convinced would be a breathtaking tango/salsa/ballet of legs with the ball at the San Siro.

The match began on a high and at the end of it all, the San Siro had turned into a mighty stranger, it was like I could not get away from all the taunting blue black in the stadium. Did all of us Rossoneri faithful feel that way last night? We must have, we had already lost the first leg, our home game 0-4, and keeping in mind our recent burst of form, there is noway any of us would have thought that we would lose this one, fear it maybe, but not really so much as entertained it as a thought process, because, well, where is the justice in that?? Really, one does not lose the first leg of an intense city derby so humiliatingly only to lose again on the return leg.

Wrong. As people around the world, as the Nerazzuri faithful and as various statistics will so sweetly point out, only the best team will win, poetic justice be damned. Last night, Inter outshone us so completely that I am thankful for the score ending the way it did, 2-0. Not that our boys did not have their moments but these were far and few in between, we won't count Borriello's missed header. That rankles. Maicon shone, Milito's was a superb goal, even though Inter were one man down, Zanetti and Cambiasso made it seem like their team hardly missed Sneijder and Goran Pandev! He wreaked havoc on Milan's beleaguered defence and caused mayhem.

I suppose that is enough as far as the match specifications are concerned. As for me, I went to bed completely disillusioned with the world. Call it stupidity, focusing on less important things while there is so much of strife in the world, but well, it's football. *Shrug*

You see, another lover of the beautiful game would completely understand when one says, "It's football," and accompanies it with a shrug. You either love it or hate it but when you love it, you have to love it completely, to the bone. To the likes of us, football is a religion and I thank God that I am not an imbecile enough to let it overshadow my life, more than a night tops(when we lose). How can I possibly explain how easy it is to lose oneself in all those intricate twists and turns of the foot, the flicks and passes, how heady it is to learn to relish a heavy tackle just as much as a devastatingly beautiful solo run across the field?

When you love football, you love your team to the hilt. Trophies or not, your team is all there is. And I will be a Milanista all the days of my life. Last night's match and despair and this morning's bracing attitude reminds me of a London cabbie who once told me, "Millwall luv, to me Millwall's all there is."

In true Jane Eyre style, I tell you, reader (readers??), football blinds me and binds me. It lifts me up when I need a smile, win or lose, just to watch the game is enough to make my spirits soar. Football has always been and will always be more than just a game to me. I am not ashamed of the excess of emotions it is able to wring out of me. No matter how bad my day might have been, when I settle in front of the television and watch my team make their way out to the pitch, hear the roar of the crowd, see the green of the pitch glint under the floodlights, hear the referee's kick off whistle, I smile and peace, palpable peace spreads through me and that moment, I do not care about the outcome of the match because I am home. Truly home. And I find myself singing Milan solo con te, Milan sempre per te.

So what do we Milanisti do now, we lick wounds, convince each other, that the league is not lost yet, focus on Livorno and Manchester United. We never give up, there is always the next match, the next leg, the next round, the next season. Continuity. And so we will continue, with our foolish excesses, loving and cursing the game, fools us, but what can I say? We are no good.