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Midnight Football: The Story of a European Football Fan in India



Staying up late till 3:00 am watching football is a common story for me and millions of Indians and billions of Southeast Asians. Messing up with the sleep cycle for 90 minutes of pure joy is nothing for us fans of the sport in this part of the globe. Watching the match with the lights off and your family sleeping in the other room, you cannot increase the volume enough to get the feel of the beautiful commentary of Peter Drury and the local fans singing their chants, but still, somehow you connect and feel the vibes in the stadium miles or kilometers away from your home. I have witnessed some of the most thrilling encounters ever played and celebrated some late winners or screamers (goals scored from long range) on mute.

Sometimes you might mess up the date the match is being played on, you might get confused like if the match is on the 16th but IST or GMT, then you have to confirm the timings. But when you get that right and get ready to watch the match at 1:30 am, it feels crazy good. The problems arise with midweek Champions League games when you have to go to the college the very next day, or to put it better, the same day as the match is being played. Either you sacrifice the match or you sacrifice sleep to wake up early after sleeping at 3:30 am. The dilemma here is that you might miss some epic moments if you don't watch the match or you get late for college in the morning. 

 

In my early days as a football fan, I planned the days to watch the matches late at night very carefully. Those kids in class who watched the late-night matches were the coolest ones because their parents let them watch that match and they reached school in time. The matches to watch should be of great consequence in the group stages or R-16 fixtures or any of the quarter and semi-finals. Champions League knockout games are a must-watch, especially the 2nd leg of the knockout rounds. Some of them are worth watching even more than the final.

In cricket, the Indian audience provides greater funding to the broadcasters outside of India, so they might tweak the timing to make it more watchable for the Indian audience if India is playing. We have to become a footballing superpower to make the Europeans tweak time for us to watch matches.

I also watch football close to home, i.e., Indian football, and the sad part is that most of the football fans in India are not even aware of the rich Indian football culture. There is a lot of history behind this, but I can mention a small part of that history here, and this snippet is from Ramchandra Guha's book "India After Gandhi." Before India's 1983 Cricket World Cup triumph, the craze for sports like football, cricket, and hockey was at the same level. Also, at that time, the broadcast of European football in India had just started, and the Indian audience started comparing the level of football played in Indian leagues and European leagues. There is more trivia like that about Indian football, but that is for another time.

This piece is very relatable to Indian football fans, and as a sports enthusiast, it is very close to my heart. To conclude, I think everyone should follow at least some kind of sport. And football fans in India should try to get interested in Indian football culture and promote it.

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