Football
Entering the pitch
Funnily enough, I was a hardcore cricket fan till 5th grade, had a poster of Virat Kohli on my bedroom door and all that. It was around that time that I started getting into football, playing regularly during PT period at school, enjoying it so much that I asked my dad to sign me up for “football class”. That was where I would spend my evenings during the year, and sometimes even go for the two month long summer camp. As my interest in football grew, I was faced with more difficult choices, “Which club do I support?”,”Messi or Ronaldo?”,”Which nation?”. I chose FC Barcelona, Lionel Messi and Argentina. Yes. I am a very big Messi fanboy, and it’s best I admit it early on.
Now that I was playing regularly, I was also getting quite good at football. I decided to go for the school football team selections, and give it a shot. Fortunately, I got selected. This was an amazing experience for me - waking up at 6am to play football with my friends, showing up late to morning assembly because me and the boys were changing up after practice, going for tournaments around Bangalore and putting on a show in front of other schools. I felt so “cool” being part of the school football team, it was great.
7th grade ballers.
Take the ball, pass the ball
I continued playing regularly, before I took a short break before my 10th grade boards because my father thought I might break my arm or something while playing and not be able to write my exams. Logic at its finest. In 11th grade, I changed schools and to my surprise, I fit in instantly into the football environment at my new school. I already knew a lot of people as we had played together many times at a ground in the neighborhood. It was amazing fun to play ‘Juniors vs Seniors’ during our overlapping PT periods, and even more so when I was able to score a goal in such an “important fixture”. School days like these were great shots of adrenaline during gloomy JEE prep.
Alongside this, I was watching every FC Barcelona game I had time for. I think I watched almost every single league game during Messi’s last season, that was my peak in terms of being a true fan. It was great, the highs like the 2015 treble (I was too young to know what football was when the previous one happened) and 6-1 PSG, to the lows like 8-2 and 4-0. One plot twist though. When Messi left Barcelona for PSG, soon after that I basically started watching only PSG matches. No more Barca. I realised I was never a Barcelona fan, I was always a Messi fan. An odd realisation for sure, because for a while I felt like the biggest plastic fan in the world, but now the idea makes sense to me, and I do not question my existence anymore. Also, I love trolling CR7. I call him Ronny and watch Man Utd games whenever he starts just so I can watch Brighton or Brentford smack them. Always very entertaining. Don’t attack me. Thank you.
Some really nice football soundtracks if you’re interested: