Open letter to Bengaluru FC from a club loyalist
Dear BFC,
Allegiance is a fickle thing. It comes in different sizes, but the biggest chunk is the one that concerns us. The largest piece of someone's attention. The commodity that forces other possibilities into subsidy. In the football world, perhaps only the actual 90 minutes are more important than allegiance.
And yet, it is selectively magnetic. It is only ever attracted to whoever is officially declared a winner. Because it can be chopped, adulterated, bought, and traded; week after week, season after season.
I write this letter with two objectives. One of them is to express how thankful I am for the force that is Bengaluru Football Club. That's exactly what the club is right now. It has grown from a debut team, unsure how much ambition to fuel, to a roaring, successful, professional giant of Indian football. In two years. Perhaps everyone who has ever achieved a 'Master's' in two years should feel slightly diminished.
Thank you, then, that in two years you have brought a management model to Indian football that ensures your success in the first place. I'm sure it will catch up and more teams will follow suit; it's the system that values performance over personality.
A philosophy where one man is in charge but isn't frowned upon. It's a system that is alien to India. We aren't designed to thrive without also making certain we are thriving more than the guy next to us. Sport shouldn't be played like that; those are games for lesser creatures. Instead, you have given us gladiators. This is evident when you see how little it affects our confidence when our captain is on the bench.
Thanks for proving the old adage: No one is bigger than the club. But most of all, thank you for changing the way India will follow football from here on. I know Bangalore has already turned.
Rolling back the clock a few years, I remember I used to see heated arguments and unlimited banter involving English clubs. I used to see people with Manchester United wristbands and 'Ronaldo' featuring in an astonishing number of email IDs. 'You'll Never Walk Alone', and 'GGMU', and 'KTTBFFH', were thrown around with great freedom along with messages of how 'we' should have done this and 'they' should have done that.
It's about all you can do from a few thousand miles away, and even then, it's hard to tell if someone is in love with the club or the brand.
With BFC, the perception of loyalty changed. It would have been laughable to suggest watching a local game, let alone wearing a club jersey, a few years ago. But there were those who weren't afraid to continue wearing the blue-white-red, unendorsed jersey of last season and they weren't embarrassed to be the only 50 people chanting in the stadium. Thank you for being worth it.
The evidence was seen when 21,786 people showed up for the Bagan clash, in what must be a record for the most productive Bangalore has ever been during the rains. Many were first-timers who will look at football completely anew.
It's one thing to be part of a social media support groups, quite another to achieve synchrony on a rainy night. The tale is a different one when you see grandfathers escort 6-year-olds with painted faces, a girl with a broken leg scream her lungs out, and random strangers hug each other, rejoicing at a goal.
Even picking on referees has an entirely different charm! Many have seen banners passed around, flags waved, and songs sung. Many know it was a small group of loyalists who arranged for 4000 people to form a mosaic, cutting each sheet to its last millimeter by hand overnight. And quite a few saw the West Block Blues literally guard the fortress when the Bagan bus arrived. They will come back next season.
There are some who've watched grown men cry, on and off the pitch. They've seen the burning vision of 15 shirtless opposition players dance in front of their eyes, and slide on our ground in happiness while our men ambled slowly towards the locker room; the incoherent singing of the opposition while lifting the trophy, the arrogant charade of their star player, mocking us, while our very own man - midfielder of the year - walked away all by himself, having been forced to stay for what wouldn't even have been half a consolation to him.
What could banter about a foreign club mean when you've been part of this? These guys will come back, year after year. A fan army - Westwood's Blue Army - like no other. To put things in perspective, we are not even a city that participates in the other, more glamourous league of the country.
You have managed to lift an entire generation of sports lovers to come outside and cheer for their local team. There will be no bigger victory for football in this country. Thank you. My second objective of writing this letter was, for whatever it may be worth, to pledge my allegiance to Bengaluru FC and this joy ride you are taking football on. I probably speak for many others too.
We have got your back. Come on you Blues.
Varun Shetty
Westwood's Blue Army
West Block A