I am just disgusted with our so-called football "supporters".
I attended our recent World Cup 2010 Qualifying match vs Honduras. Before the match started I seeing alot of people wining and jumping up to the music, so told myself the team's going to get good vocal support, but to my amazement, as soon as it started, and the time to make noise arrived, everyone was as quiet as a damned church mouse.
Throughout the match I was most likely one of if not the Loudest person in that whole stadium(and I'm not a very loud person) I was singing at the top of my lungs in between cheering every touch our players made and booing every touch of the Honduran players(was booing now and then though,many times I just cheered our players to defend hard and get back the ball, jury's out on which is better though, I think the latter.). I was trying to make up for the 15000 church mice that packed out the Hasely Crawford stadium. To top it all off people had the nerve to watch me with the, "Wha wrong with he, why he making so much noise and being different " look. What in the world is wrong with us as Trinidadians!!?
People seem think attending your team's World Cup qualifying football match is like going to the movies,newsflash-it isn't! We are supposed to be the 12th man. Our presence alone barely does anything, because if there was a twelfth player on our team who just stood there still on the field, and didn't participate in the game, he'd be almost useless. Likewise if everyone just sits there quietly, their impact is very small. The visiting team soon forgets they are surrounded by more than 20000 foreigners, who would like nothing less than for them to utterly fail, and they then get comfortable and play their usual game. The visiting team is not supposed to be unaffected and able to play at their usual pace! The mere fact that Fifa has as a punishment that the offending team must play a match at an empty stadium acknowledges the tremendous impact supporters can have on their team.
The reason teams fear going to Anfield and face Liverpool in the Champions League, is because of the atmosphere the crowd generates, thats likened onto a "Cauldron", this driving on from their supporters, and intimidation of the visiting teams(which assists in them making more mistakes and generally not flowing as they normally would), makes Liverpool consistently punch above their weight in the champions league at Anfield particularly. With the lack of vocal support our team gets most of the time in Trinidad, its almost as if every game they play is an away game. Besides the issues with management etc, I think thats a contributing factor to why we've only qualified for one world cup, even though we've had so many talented players through the years. If every game throughout for some EPL team was an away game, that team would win nothing and probably likely get relegated come the end of the season. That statement isn't a stretch, thats about how important the home advantage is.
In matches people only cheer when the team comes close to scoring, when if they cheer them on throughout the match, with the heightened confidence and drive that generates in the players(and intimidation and nervousness in opponents), they most likely would drive forward with more intensity and create more chances, thereby scoring more goals, winning more games, and getting more points- hence achieving more in general. This even helps "crappy" players and teams perform better, much more for our players, a number of which are exceptionally talented. It will also help our *ahem* slightly lacking players to perform better and with more drive and determination at our home games. Why do you think club teams generally play better at home? Its not some magical thing, its the supporters' backing- knowing that tens of thousands of people are cheering for *you* is bound to have an impact on any human being. We must not forget that half(!) of our qualifying games are at home, so if we can consistently perform at a different level at home(thus picking up more points), coupled with picking up some points away, we'll be a very productive and feared team.
The recent qualifying match between USA and El Salvador(EL Salvador completely dominated USA and scored 2 in the first half, only to let it slip to a 2-2 draw) was a good example of how much an impact the crowd can have on the game. Goal.com even ran a story attesting to the impact the crowd had on the match and the performance of their team(and lack thereof on USA's part). Another example of the crowd's impact on the games result is Iran and their home games in the Azadi stadium. Teams FEAR going to play Iran there, and watching Iran's record at that stadium, you would swear they were Brazil in disguise. Search Azadi Stadium on Youtube.
Trinidadians, we must be a nation of leaders and not followers. We can talk when its about trivial things, but when times come around that our voice can have an impact and make a difference, said voice vanishes. Why when I'm cheering at the top of my lungs for OUR team, I get people watching me like," Why he doesn't stay quiet like everyone else around him?" and others looking at each other as if to say,"You start cheering first,"and,"I'm only one person, what difference can my one voice make?" So what naturally followed was that everyone in the stadium said that, and the result was silence, save the Carib rhythm section. I'm sure some people around the stadium were itching to cheer more, but they couldn't pull out of themselves the will to be different from everyone around them, and in that not care. That is to lead.
What I saw at that stadium was a cross section of the nation, and their actions was an indictment on us as a people- a part explanation of why we face some of the issues we do in this country. As individuals, we don't recognize worth of ourselves as a person, the worth and impact our one voice(i.e.you are important, no matter how many time people say you're too black,white,skinny,fat) can have on other people and on the world(think Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr), and the change we can make by individually leading the way, by being the change.
Don't think I'm excusing the management and Maturana's questionable "organisation" of the team, and the players' sometimes less than stellar performances. I'm just saying we as supporters and a people have look at the man in the mirror also.
Take care out there everyone.
