Glory Hunters???

When taunting the fans of rival football clubs (especially Chelsea), terms like ‘Glory hunters’, ‘Jumping into the bandwagon’ float in the air occasionally. But are we justified in calling somebody so?

Let me elaborate on it by considering the ways in which a person becomes a football fan.

Style: The style in which a team plays. Most of the fans of Arsenal. Barcelona and may be Manu fans also fall into this category. And if you are a bit retarded you may even like Liverpool and Chelsea.

Titles: Winning trebles or doubles creates a lot of interest among non-followers, who tend to start following from then. Or even domination for that matter generates new followers. Fans of Manu, Real and to some extent Chelsea fall in this category

Players: Stars like Henry, Ronaldinho, Ronaldo command lot of attention and attract viewers easily. And once you like them you automatically start supporting the teams they play for. Arsenal, Barcelona and Manu fans again fall into this category

Bizarre: I call it bizarre, not that I disapprove any of the ways but just because I had to name it something. Some people tend to support the underdogs, because they feel that nobody else appreciate those teams’ performances. Some say that when they started following football only Manu matches were being telecasted in their country. It may also be the case that some of your close friends or relatives follow a particular team and listening to them talk so much about their favorites you too will get curious.

These are all the mutually exclusive reasons I could think of. Also more than one reason can be responsible for a person to become a fan of a particular football club.

Now coming back to the actual issue, in my opinion the first three are all equally effective in generating fans and cant find fault with any of them. So ‘Glory hunters’ who fall in the second category are not so different from most other fans.

Taking Chelsea for example, we can hate the club for supersaturating the game with money, creating inflationary pressure during the player transfers etc, but not its fans for following the club after it started winning.

The ‘converts’ who change loyalties whenever they see a better team or prospective winners deserve to be called ‘Glory hunters’ but not those who stick to the same club even during the rough patches and follow it passionately, after they started following it during a purple patch.