The Team To Support

The best teams are those who dance on that thin line between glory and catastrophe.

- Pranay Sanklecha

The football World Cup is a bit like the IPL—regardless of whether you want to follow it or not, it’s impossible to avoid. And, as all betting companies know, watching sport is a lot more fun when you are emotionally invested in it. So, on the principle that you may as well enjoy things you cannot avoid, the question arises: who should I support?

In fact, I need two teams. You need one team who have a chance of going all the way, and another who, for whatever reason, you find fun or interesting— a lot of the joy of the World Cup comes from an underdog making an improbable run to the quarters or semis.

The obvious choice for both teams, in a way, would be England, I suppose. I lived there for ten years, and many of my best friends are English. Why, I myself am in some way part-English, from my accent to many of my beliefs. But… but you can’t do it, can you? It is not because of colonialism or anything historical, though, of course, that does not help. No, my inability to support England is rooted in a present dislike of their sports teams. There is just this air of beefy entitlement pervading it all, compounded by moaning when it does not go their way. Their sportsmen are always going to ‘bring the Cup home’. And, when their cricket team does not, it is because of conditions. When their football team does not, it is because it was hot.