Club Football

I am a football fanatic ...

... the beginnings of which can be traced back to when I was 10 years old and stayed up late to watch the Germany-Argentina final during Italia '90. Uptil France '98, the football I saw was mainly international. After that, ESPN & Star Sports started beaming the UEFA Champions League (CL) which gave me my first taste of club football. I found it to be tremendously exciting, fast paced and lively. Initially, I started out by following Manchester United after their injury time blitz of Bayern Munich in the '99 final. That probably will be one of the all time best finishes to a soccer game. They created history that year by winning the treble - CL, English Premier League (EPL) and the FA cup and their manager Alex Ferguson was knighted for his services. The following two years, in the CL, Valencia from the Spanish Primera Liga reached the finals courtesy of their counter-attack philosophy fashioned by the then manager Héctor Cúper. Though they lost out both times, their style of play made them very entertaining to watch. Those two seasons, I watched nearly all of the CL knockout stage games (they began at 12 midnight and went on till 2:30 in the am) and was convinced that club football is "the" football. Soon after, ESPN & Star Sports started showing premiership games regularly.

Those years, I followed all there was to follow in football - games, player transfers, new signings and just like that, football became a religion for me. In mid '01, I left India to pursue higher studies in the US and that put the brakes on my football following with the Americans preferring baseball, american football, ice hockey and basketball. Inspite of this, i managed to catch the WC held in Japan/Korea '02 and Euro held in Portugal '04.

I returned back to India last May and before i joined my new job, I had a month in which to watch the knockout games of the CL as well as the final few games of the EPL. The CL final proved again that club football is where all the excitement is with Liverpool coming back form a 3-0 first half deficit against AC Milan to win in a penalty shootout. For some reason, playing for their club brings out the best in players which sadly is not always true when they play for their countries. Also, the multi-cultural medley added by foreign players and managers brings out a unique flavor.

With the Germany '06 said and done (which was a disappointing experience overall), I am all set for the forthcoming EPL and CL seasons. I think the EPL has become very competitve off late with players of international repute like Gerrard, Lampard, Essien, Crespo, Drogba, Rooney, Cech, Van der Sar, van Nistelrooij, Owen and so on plying their trades with Ballack, Shevchenko, Rosicky etc following in their footsteps. Should make for a very interesting season.

Long live club football !!!