Chp 72. World Cup: My Team

One of the hardest things for me to do during these two Holy Months of The World Cup is selecting a team that I would cheer for.

When I was young, choosing a team was easy because those days I never got to watch much of International Football mainly due to the fact that it had a very poor coverage. After all, the only channels we used to get in our television back in Mizoram those days were Doordarshan, Bangaladesh channel, Burmese channel, and if we twist our reception antennae a bit here and there, we even used to get “Arirang” the Korean channel!

And then Star TV entered the Indian market (Those were the days when Star Plus used to air shows like Santa Barbara, Tour of Duty, Mash, Sledge Hammer, Moonlighting, Force Five etc). So even in Mizoram, people stopped watching “Chitrahaar” on Wednesday nights and Bangladesh’s “Movie of the Week” at 5pm on Fridays (*sigh* Those were truly the days! Sniff Sniff…) and switched to a more globalized version of TV entertainment.

Those days, World Cup would mean supporting for Brazil, Italy or Argentina. And regardless of what team we are supporting, most of us knew just a handful of players. Pele, Maradona, Rudd Gullit, Van Basten, Batistuta, Valderrama, Gary Lineker, Cantona, Zico and Lothar Matthaeus. I forgot which channel used to show those WC matches live, but I do remember watching it, with flags and facial paints and drums surrounded by my childhood friends and cousins.

And now, a lot of things have changed. One thing for starters, I have seen a hell lot of International matches. EPL, La Liga, Bundesliga, you name it. Hence you get to know nearly every current world class players. And I’ve also never missed a single Arsenal game for the past 3 years now. And I think this is the main reason why I’m finding it so damn hard to find “my team” in this World Cup.

And I think this problem is more or less faced by every hardcore Club supporters all over the World. Arsenal players are present in almost every team that has qualified for the league, and at the same time, players from Clubs I really hate are also there in the same team. What to do?

The other day, I was watching Argentina vs. Ivory Coast from my cozy new Mumbai flat. My roomie from Bangalore, also a hardcore Gunner fan, was all for Argentina. We were text messaging each other through out the match. I asked him how could he not support Ivory Coast which had two Arsenal players Toure and Eboue, and yet root for a team that has the likes of Riqueme that played a havoc in the Arsenal camp during our UEFA semi final and Messi from Barca who beat Arsenal in the finals and also Chelsea’s Crespo & ManUtd’s Heinze. His reply was, how could I support a team that has Drogba who scored a goal against Arsenal in both our two encounters with Chelsea last season.

So you see where I am getting at. Look at England. The defence line-up is made up of Chelsea’s Terry, ManUtd’s Rio and Arsenal’s Ashley Cole and there’s also our Sol Campbell. And so finally, yesterday I decided to keep all Club differences aside. It was indeed a hard thing to do, but I am not going to get anywhere with my loyal Arsenal vow, and we are already on day 4 of the competition. Better late than never.

And that is exactly the reason why I will not be supporting France. As I said before, at first I wanted to be behind France due to its heavy Arsenal presence, but Henry turned out to be the sole Arsenal player in the squad. Now that I have kept Club differences aside, Henry’s presence is really not enough for me to support a team. Ofcourse France has an excellent fire power in the offence area with Henry, Trezeguet, Saha, Wilthord and Cisse calling the shots and the formidable Viera at midfield (Zouzou isn’t the God he once used to be), but it would be better to have talent equally distributed in every position rather than just one spot. No team is ever going to play a 1-4-1-5 formation And other than Thuram, their defence isn’t that great compared to other teams (I don’t like Silvestre, never had, never will).

So with France out of the option, what else do I have? Man, Brazil is so freaking strong with Roberto Carlos, Cafu, Lucio, Cicinho at defence, Dida behind the gloves, Emerson, Ronaldhino, Kaka, Arsenal’s Gilberto , Juninho etc at Mid-field, Ronaldo, Adriano, Robinho as forwards. Phew! That’s one mean arsenal of players (pun not intended ). But a promise is a promise. Like I said before, the victory of a weaker team is much much more sweeter than that of one that’s sure to win. This ship ain’t sailing to Brazil.

Italy is also very strong with Del Piero, Inzaghi, Totti, Nesta, Cannavaro and the trustworthy Buffon. The same goes for Spain with Raul, Luis Garcias, David, Torres, Joaqin, Arsenal’s Reyes , Salgado, Puyol and either Casillas or Cannizares behind the gloves. But most of the other players are unfamiliar to me, and yeah, too many people I know are supporting these two teams solely because of “their good looks”. LoLz.

Finally, I came to a decision. Me and somebody I treasure deeply are both going to cheer for the Netherlands. It’s high time the Dutch glory days are revived once again. Why Holland? Because much as I hate to admit it, I really hold ManUtd’s Nistlerooy in high regards (Forgive me, my Arsenal brothers, for saying this). I consider him to be the best “poacher” ever in the history of football. And then there’s Chelsea’s Robben and Arsenal’s very own promising young Van Persie, and Van der Sar happens to be one of my favorite goal keeper (he replaced Tim Howard). Ajax’s Sneijder and PSV’s Cocu are also players not to be taken lightly. Plus the team has a lot of people named “Van”, just like me Van lalruatkima . There are exactly 6 Van’s in the current squad: Van Der Sar, Van Bronckhorst (ex Arsenal now in Barca) Van Der Vaart, Van Bommel, Van Nistlerooy and Van Persie. And I used to love their current coach when he was a player: The Legendary Van Basten himself (Who happens to be yet another Van!!! )

Ofcourse having similar name is not the only reason why I love this team. If similar name was the criteria, I would definitely go for South Korea which has 7 Kim’s in their line up: KIM Yong Dae, KIM Young Kwang, KIM Young Chul, KIM Dong Jin, KIM Jin Kyu, KIM Sang Sik, KIM Nam Il and KIM Do Heon. Man that’s a lot of KIMs. You’re definitely going to see a lot of players sporting the same name when Korea plays. And I think it is indeed a very good strategy to confuse the referee

Among the under-dogs, I am all the way behind Togo, not just because they are led by Arsenal’s very own Adebayor who is the current African leading scorer in this competition with 12 goals to his credit so far, but also because they have a very impressive team record. They beat Senegal 3-1 and a host of other Nations and this is by far one of the best under-dog team ever. Go Togo!