It Is About Expectations!

Även publicerad på Vital Chelsea;

Being a fan is a complicated and yet incredibly easy thing.

Often unexplained, though we do our best to find a single explanation. A goal, a game or an adventurous afternoon with our peers and parents. Something started it. I know for some it is the name, for others it is the colours we wear.

Nothing matters, we simply fall in love. A love that keeps growing and usually stays with us for life. It is truer than the love between man and wife as the divorce figures show. Maybe the only true constant of our lives. Sometimes dormant, like under the hooligan years when the club was kidnapped by people one does not want to be associated with. But never ever gone.

Many have tried to define and explain this strange, mainly male, phenomena of supportership. And why it is different in different places. If it is different? I have read many accounts from the US where people are mad because they do not think the quarter of a million or so that chose to attend the Chelsea games over there are true fans. Poppycock and language Vital prohibits me from using.

The backside of loving Chelsea, even for those that inexplicably love a club like Liverpool, is the ones that always claim to love more, to know more - simply to be better than all other fans. How I hate reading what they write. I know I should be nice and try to understand them and their petty insecurities. I can not. I even refuse to understand them.

I know that in the US sport is bigger than anywhere, but it is also chopped up into little pieces for advertising or at the arenas snack breaks that seem incessant to us that have a longer attention span (sorry, could not help myself there!).

Still, I can only find incredible joy in seeing so many new fans loving Chelsea. Their love is the same as my love, whenever it was awakened. I have loved and supported Chelsea near 40 years now, give or take a month. And all it really says is two things;

1/ I have had the honour and gift of seeing Chelsea play many times, and I have suffered through many bad times and some good times.

2/ I am getting old. Nothing more.

I am no better than my neighbour`s kid that discovered Chelsea just weeks ago. One day she will also suffer through bad times, though I do hope she never has to. Because I have to admit, I like it much better when my beloved Chelsea are successful than fighting relegation battles or being falsely used by hooligans for their own purposes.

The US tour this year has been more interesting than maybe any pre-season tour. Partly because the new manager and some new interesting players. Partly of the amazing interest the Americans have shown it. Basically sold out everywhere and Chelsea seemed to have the strongest support of all the teams (apart from Club America in Dallas but there is a geosocial explanation for that). Mainly because it is the ultimate proof that Chelsea have grown up and is today truly one of the big clubs, the biggest, in the world.

Also, it taught me something I already knew. How strong our support is in countries that trully suffers from time differences. I knew about them watching football in the very wee hours. Now I have felt it! (It does take a special kind of love to do that, especially over poor hopeless internet feeds that offer you a tiny square on your laptop and jerky movements without being able to read numbers).

Being fortunate to also have a local team to support. In my case Djurgården I have recently also been very much aware of the importance of being Expectant.

Something that brings me back to the days when being a Chelsea supporter was not very high on the expectations list, you simply were grateful for any goal and any points our blue heroes brought you. Today I expect Premier League victories, I expect us to come as close to the Champions League as UEFA allows us. It puts a little bit of strain on my love. But only animals show unrequited love. Though supportership is probably the closest thing to it.

Djurgården right now is teaching me to expect the worse and be grateful for the little things they give me. Staying out of relegation is the major thing I hope to be awarded this year for my support. I can not remember exactly when I needed to feel that way with Chelsea. I do not miss it.

Still it was easier times when every little bit of joy was so appreciated in return for my support. I do not think it was better times.

I truly love to see JT and all the other boys hoist those ugly prizes that are called trophies in the sporting world. To see their unadulterated joy of it and feeling myself grinning worse than any cheshire cat in front of the tv - the place for all of us that due to distance and circumstances can not be there in the hallowed grounds that are our fields of worship.

So Chelsea; this is what I expect this year. I expect a triple and that does not include the drink cup. In the drink cup I expect us to play as many youngsters as we did in Dallas. See it worked too.

If we do not get there in May. Well, that disappointment is hard to take, harder if we were to lose to teams I hate or if we ever again encounter a fish stinker that by the might of his officialdom can destroy all dreams and hopes by just being biased and incredibly bad. I will as usual not talk, not read, not write and not participate in anything till my heart heals.

But right now I can not see anything that will stop us from getting there. Champions are what Chelsea has become and whether you have been there from the beginning (no one is still alive I think,) or just part of the way does not matter. The love for Chelsea is all that matters.