Life's so easy...

In the world of football, I'm glad I'm a fan. We have the easiest jobs. It's so easy to cheer and praise the team when they win and it's so easy to blame them when they lose. Easy. When the whistle blows, we fans don't have to remember that there's 90 minutes of "rigorous excercise" ahead; we don't have to remember that the pitch is large enough to land an aeroplane. We don't need to remember any of that because life for us is easy.

Does no one remember what everyone said about Zidane in the beginning? When France just managed to advance from the group stages with a less-than-impressive performance, critics and us fans were all sure Zizou was past it. The name "Zidane" was synonomous to the word "doubt". Then Zidane showed us dazzling football again and scored one himself against Spain. Suddenly, we are back with the "Vintage Zidane" and we jump to call him the "best living footballer of today". His face is shown to be the "man of the match" in every game France plays.

And don't think that is all. I remember the start of World Cup 2002 when everyone criticised Ronaldo for loss of form. Then Brasil went on to win 1, then 2, then eventually, all their games with Ronaldo scoring the 2 final crucial goals. Ronaldo was the hero again because he was playing for the winning team. It was only natural that the same would occur in 2006. Criticism about Ronaldo's weight was coming from everyone and when he didn't score in the first 2 matches, he was out of favour with us, the fans. Easy. Then Ronie scored 2 beautiful goals against Japan and we all loved him again. The goal against Ghana secured Ronie as the all-time top scorer in World Cup history and we all labelled him "El Fenómeno" once again.

Does it last? One match is all it takes. One off game, one goal-less match, one loss and everyone has forgotten this:
The 2002 hero is nothing again but an "overweight joke" as we sit in our air-conditioned rooms yelling at the TV screen every time he misses the goal. Then as the Brasilian team exits their hotel in Germany after their defeat, already feeling down, we fans do what we do best and blame the team. Things like "You have shamed our country", or, "please leave our country" come so easily to our mouths. A team who just worked their ass off for us and who is already feeling shattered from losing...we cannot wait to remind them exactly how useless they are - because that is our contribution to the Beautiful Game.

Carlos Alberto Parreira: Thanks for the 1994 World Cup, 2004 Copa America and 2005 Confederations Cup but you are useless because you didn't bring home the 6th World Cup. Please try harder next time because standing outside your hotel and jeering can be an awful lot of work sometimes. But there won't be a next time because you have shamed Brasil already.

And when this all happens, I read something very strange following Germany's elimination by Italy:

"You battled like world champions. Germany’s dream of winning the World Cup has been shattered. It would have been brilliant, but now we’ll take third place on Saturday, and none of us is complaining."

"Over the last few weeks, the Germans have rediscovered a love for their country and for their football team, and that’s here to stay."

"It was left to the fans, outstanding yet again, to put their devastation to one side and console the team with chants of “Deutschland” and standing ovations. "

No jeering? No angry protests? No unflattering news reports of "full-night partying" the night before? I am even more confused when I read of fans in Recife singing "I am Brazilian and I am very proud" after Brazil's elimination. This is not what we fans do and all this is making our "job" more difficult. We only cheer when our team brings home the silverware, or, in this case, the Golden trophy. Otherwise, we give the team a piece of our selfish little minds. Like I said - easy.