Why I support Manchester United

This article is a slightly different one from the usual ramblings I write about, and honestly its born out of discussions with people, online threads the latest one being this tweet where a Manchester United fan from India is being targeted because they are going to watch a game at Old Trafford.

Before I get into it, a bit of context about who I am - I am from India, never been to Manchester, used to follow cricket very religiously for a while till the IPL and too much cricket happened and I lost track and interest. I started watching football and “supporting” United somewhere around 2007 or roughly since I was 13/14 years old.

Over the years, I have had quite a few conversations about why we end up supporting teams with different people -

1. Those that don’t follow any sports or support any sports teams,

2. Those that are able to follow their local teams or their national teams and;

3. Lastly those (largely European football and lately F1) who end up following teams halfway across the globe.

Conversations with the first group are mostly centered around them not being able to comprehend, what leads people to attach so much of their sanity and happiness to random people running around a ball and trying to put it into a net, especially those who don’t play the said sport.

The second group has overcome that challenge, and loves their local team and/or their national team, this would be a kid from Manchester that cries over Manchester United and England or someone from Bangalore that supports RCB and India. But if they don’t also belong to the third group, they often struggle to understand how can someone feel for some random team if they don’t have a local connection to them.

The Short Answer

As someone that belongs to the last group (and second), if I had to condense my understanding it would be this -

Its irrational, every fan, regardless of how they start supporting a team, has their own story, lore and justifications for why they support the team they do. It might start with a particular player, or silverware or fame, overtime every true fan crosses a threshold where they start feeling for that team and they can no longer answer why they actually support them.

For me it was a sense of community, belonging, the starting point of friendships, hope and of course entertainment.

Supporting a team and watching games - especially with other supporters creates a bond that is difficult to explain, but in that moment you feel like you’ve known those people all your life - and that high is addictive.

This is my journey to how I became an ardent Manchester United fan, my thoughts on the differences b/w me and a local fan and how Manchester United became a part of who I am.

Remember the name!

That’s how it started, I distinctly remember Wayne Rooney being the reason behind me becoming a Manchester United fan. My memory is a little hazy on whether it was a game first or the cover for FIFA 06 that made me curios, but something about Rooney really got me hooked to football (as a spectator) and eventually to Manchester United.

It was all for Wazza initially, watching videos on YouTube and trying to catch some games/highlights on Star Sports and Ten Sports (this was a lot more challenging as a school going kid in India),

Fortunately for me, 2006-09 was a great time to be a Manchester United fan, the team was dominating PL and Europe, was stacked from Goalkeeper to Striker, the squad was a combination of skilled players and strong characters - VDS, Evra, Ferdinand, Vidic, Scholes, Giggs, Wes Brown, Neville and of course the attack of Rooney, Ronaldo and Tevez.

If you already had a reason to follow them, it was very difficult to not fall in love with Manchester United at this time.

Understanding the game

To say that I am not very athletic - would not be wrong, this was even more true when I was 13/14. But whenever I start following a game closely, I do end up putting in time to understand how its played, the tactics and the stories. At that time, more than YouTube, I used to try and catch the random fillers that sports channels used to air which would have some interviews with coaches, managers and players as well as analysis (pre/post game).

And again, if you want to introduce someone to good football in 2006-09 era the few teams you would ask them to watch were Manchester United, Barcelona and maybe Chelsea and since no other team had a player called Wayne Rooney, I ended up with United.

Truly United

After a few years of primarily relying on highlights and somehow catching a few important games, I was finally grown up enough to be able to stay up for games and actually watch them live. This was the time I also discovered the Manchester United community on Reddit - /r/reddevils.

At that time, this was something I did not have IRL - a community of passionate, ardent United followers. It was a mix of local folks from Manchester and fans like me from around the globe, all coming together to celebrate wins, speculate on transfers and rant about losses.

This was the time I started reading a lot more about the history of the club - the founding, being saved from bankruptcy because of a dog, the bombing of Old Trafford during the world war, the arrival of Matt Busby, the Busby Babes, the Munich Disaster, the rebuild after and the European glory that followed, the Holy Trinity of Best, Law and Charlton, to how United was relegated, to the Early Fergie Years, the Class of 92, the PL dominance, the 99 treble with the iconic win in Camp Nou, to another rebuild, culminating in the CL win in Moscow in 2008 and beyond with inspirational stories of Matt Busby, Jimmy Muphy, the legend of Duncan Edwards fast forward to the modern era of Alex Ferguson and players like Roy Keane, Paul Scholes, Rooney, Ronaldo, Van Nistelrooy, Jaap Stam and even stories off the field from Carrington.

All of the above - the glory, the hardship but most importantly, the resilience, the mentality is what made me feel for United. Made me cross a point where watching United games and discussing them on online forums (& later friends) became a ritual and often an escape, something to look forward to all week.

On Local Supporter vs Outsiders

Ever since I’ve become a fan, I’ve seen and sometimes participated in the discussions around outsiders being true fans, and here is my take on it -

Are we true fans? 100%, definitely yes! We plan our weekends and sometimes weekdays around United games, we might not purchase season tickets, but still might buy the jersey every now and then, we wake up and stay up at odd hours to watch games - we go crazy when we score, crazier when we win, we sing chants at screenings and can be pretty miserable when we lose (we can be really bad company after a loss).

But, can we compare this to a local? Maybe not. They have a little more skin in the game than we do. Consider a kid who’s a 3rd generation United fan, goes to a school where some kids are 3rd generation City supporters, the amount of banter this kid can get or dish out for that matter is insane, now do this for 38 games in a season, in the classroom, on the play ground, during recess etc and you can see why a local fan might feel a little more entitled than we do.

I do believe that while Manchester United is part of the identity for both sets of fans, the locals just have it a little more than us.

So, why do I support Manchester United?

As I said before, I feel every fan ends up creating their own story around this.

In 2006/07, my story was that I like Wayne Rooney, hence I like Manchester United.
From 07-09, it might have been that Manchester United is the best team in the world, playing great, attractive, fluid football.

But if it was just these, then today these are not true - Rooney has retired from football, and if you follow football even a little, you would know that Manchester United, since 2014 has not been an easy team to follow.

Today, my answer to that question is - I just do, I love United and what it represents. A storied club without parallel, in persistence, character and history.

The legends that have played on the field and the ones that were on the sidelines, everyone has something to teach or was someone to learn from.

And as I said earlier, it also provides a sense of belonging now, whether it was the online community, a passionate group of friends or just faces you see when you go to a match or screening, you might not know their names, but you recognise them as your people for that match.