Is being a fan healthy?
Whether it’s Sergio Aguero 94th minute winner, or Liverpool winning the Champions League from 3–0 down, football is an incredible sport that produces great moments and brings great reactions from fans. However, only the fans that support a certain team can fully experience the euphoria of your team scoring a late winner, or feeling the agony of conceding such an important goal.
Why do we support teams?
There are many reasons why people start supporting football clubs, and it usually differs in societies. In Europe, most fans support their local team and go watch the team play on a weekly basis. Fans are also very committed, and some clubs have ultra groups. Because most fans from Europe support their local team, they feel a close bond with the team, a bond that they wouldn’t have if they supported another team. In Asia, because the quality of football isn’t very high and fans in Asia want to support teams that consistently win, most fans in Asia support the likes of Manchester United, FC Barcelona, Real Madrid, and other top football teams. Even though they may not feel that bond that local fans would, they tend to “compensate” by having a lot of knowledge about the club and essentially try to watch every match possible, like a normal fan from Europe.
Investing yourself as a fan is not like putting money in a bank, you can’t just take it out whenever you want. According to Daniel Wann (professor of psychology at Murray State University), there are several similarities between a fan’s identification with a sports team and how people identify with their nationality, ethnicity, even gender, associating themselves with a team based on their identity. Furthermore, people like to identify to certain things and ideas because they have the sense of belonging that they won’t feel elsewhere. Because of the shared identity that fans have with clubs, when teams are experiencing success, fans have a heightened sense of joy and ecstasy, but when experiencing failure, fans experience a heightened sense of agony. The sense of belonging and identity with a team is what makes the whole investment valuable.
The negativity bias
The negativity bias refers to the idea that even when events are recorded as having equal intensity, things of negative nature have a greater impact on one’s psychological state than a positive event. This can be seen with Manchester United’s elimination from the Champions League. Despite the fact that Manchester United have beaten every team in the league season and are on course for an automatic Champions League qualification & a FA Cup, the manner that Manchester United played and the fact that they lost put a huge dent on this season and how the fans feel about the season. One match can define a season, and losses always seem to have a larger impact on the team & fans in comparison to wins.
Is being a fan healthy?
But is it healthy? The answer is yes, considering that most football fans support a top side that win a lot of trophies. Football is a place where emotions can be fully expressed and people feel a sense of unity and identity when watching football, and where you watch the game and who you watch the game with can definitely impact your perceptions, opinions, and attitudes towards certain moments in football. In a country like Italy, missing the World Cup is like the end of the world and the players are considered massive failures, whereas in a country like the United States, while missing the World Cup is still a blow for the country, the reaction to missing out is far less harsh in comparison to Italians. However, despite the downfalls and inevitable disappointment that comes from being a fan, it’s undoubtedly one of the best feelings in the world when your team scores a late winner. The pure joy that one receives from that goal being scored will certainly outweigh all the negatives that come from being a football fan. The joy of having a common identity can be seen with almost any die-hard fans. Fans sing the whole game and support the team no matter what, because they’re already very proud of the club that they support and being able to support it only heightens that passion.
