KUNAL PRADHAN

I last saw him 14 years ago. It was at Highbury. I was on the Clock End, a few metres behind the goal. He was on the touchline. It was a wonderful autumn afternoon in London. We were playing Charlton Athletic. We won 4-0. Thierry Henry scored twice, including the famous back-heel goal. It was the second-last game of the unbeaten run, but we didn’t know it then. The crowd erupted into a chant only one club in England has had the right to sing in over a century, ‘We are invincible’. But the crowning moment, as the final whistle went off, was the congregation of Gooners breaking into an impromptu song, set to the tune of Winter Wonderland: ‘There’s only one Arsene Wenger’. He smiled, waved, smiled again, disappeared into the tunnel.

Here was a Wenger. When comes such another?

Fandom is not about savouring victory. It is about the sweet misery of defeat. About having no control whatsoever over something thousands of miles away, but letting it affect your mood, your day, and often unbeknownst to you, your personality.

In between, there are a few good days when you win.

Football fandom, in particular, is not celebrating a great finish or a perfectly measured pass. It is about the qualities that make your club, your favourite national team, even your local six-a-side consistently find itself in positions that it does. It requires engagement, demands partisanship. You can’t dabble in it, you have to live it.

Sure, you can admire Diego Maradona’s solo run against England in 1986, or Pele’s pass to Carlos Alberto in 1970, or van Persie’s flying header in 2014 no matter which team you follow. But the larger narrative trumps these moments of brilliance. And that narrative is scripted by the manager.

A lot of us in India who have grown up following cricket don’t