This could well be another article on the subject of ‘reasons why I hate modern football’. It could also be another example of my inexorable advance toward old age; also known as ‘Grumpy Old Man Syndrome’.
If you’ve heard it all before or are sick and tired of the constant moaning about modern football from so called ‘Yer Da’s’ then I apologise.
On the other hand, I make no apologies, because I like many others I know, are sick and tired of the division and hate spewed from social media or ‘football twitter’ as the youth call it or more specifically Chelsea football twitter.
Over the last couple of years, we’ve seen another vexatious theme emanating from social media; the rise of the ‘FanBoy’.
They are easy to spot. They never have a photo of themselves as their profile pic. They often have a picture of Chelsea player as their profile pic. Sometimes that profile pic is of a player such as Mason Mount with a big red cross over it. Their twitter names are often a deliberate misspelling of players such as Mount, Pulisic and Jorginho, including CFC or SZN in it.
It seems that many ‘apparent’ Chelsea fans (I use the word fan deliberately Mr Sheditor) have aligned themselves to various Chelsea players; well, to be precise Christian Pulisic and Jorginho.
I would imagine that the allegiance to Jorginho came because of the influx of Chelsea fans on social media with Mauricio Sarri’s appointment. Sarri was known for a football philosophy built around possession and complex passing routines. Jorginho was seen as the representative of his philosophy on the pitch.
I would never claim to be an expert on the tactical nuances of football, and I don’t have any coaching badges. Equally, I have never played a game of EA Sports FIFA in my life. It appears to me that there is an obsession with the tactical side of the game and especially data that simply didn’t exist when I fell in love with football.
Of course, there is nothing wrong with that per se. Our current manager, as well as being thoroughly versed in the emotional workings of the human mind with his master’s degree in Emotional Intelligence, is also known to use data in many of his football decisions, as was our previous manager and our current ownership.
It’s about balance of course and different philosophies complementing each other. However, I suspect that in a world increasingly driven by technology and the isolation this often brings, we are seeing an alarming polarity in views. When you absorb so much information without allowing nuance and therefore have less real-life connection to humanity and society it is no surprise that your world view becomes very rigid and indeed entrenched.
In a nutshell this is what we see on football twitter where the views expressed are increasingly black and white. As a student of psychology, I can tell you that this kind of behaviour is often deep rooted but tends to be an indication of underlying fear and insecurity. If you feel safe and secure, then you are often more open to differing opinions and receptive to having your views challenged.
Another Chelsea player who has become a standard bearer for the FanBoys is Christian Pulisic. FanBoys of Pulisic are very likely to be from America and have inventive twitter names like ‘American Hooligans’ or some other reference to the USMNT (United States Men’s National Team for the uninitiated) or an incorporation of the Pulisic name.
Pulisic is the most high-profile footballer from the USA to play for a high-profile team and arguably the most talented. To use the old boxing saying, he is the ‘great white hope’ of US football. When Chelsea signed him, it was inevitable that American’s who, hitherto, had little knowledge or interest in Chelsea, would flock to the club.
This is not unreasonable. When you have no direct connection to a club or its community you find them any way you can and doing so because you like a certain player is as good a reason as any. Nearly 50 years ago, I did much the same thanks to a certain Ray Wilkins. The essential difference of course was that I was 12 years old then and whilst tears were shed when Ray Wilkins left Chelsea to join Man Utd, I am still here supporting Chelsea.
I suspect that many of the Pulisic FanBoys will dispense with Chelsea as soon as Pulisic leaves Chelsea and joins another club. In the meantime, they are causing as much havoc on social media as the Jorginho fan boys.
Another issue I have with FanBoy behaviour is that it is alarmingly almost pathologically obsessive. Fan culture has of course, always been on the obsessive spectrum but in essence it only furthers the kind of entrenchment and black and white perspective I mentioned earlier.
In the middle of all of this is Mason Mount. I confess, if I was 12 years old, I would probably be a Mason Mount FanBoy, but that is for another article!
In their black and white entrenched thinking, the Jorginho and Pulisic FanBoys have singled Mason Mount out and focussed all their paranoic ire on to him. Why? Ostensibly Mount is seen as a threat to their beloved player. Consequently, everything that Jorginho or Pulisic does is good; everything that Mount does is bad.
They can’t comprehend that there can be emotional and mental space for all three of them in the team. They are beyond reasoning though and frankly I suspect that their behaviour is psychopathological and evidence of a mental disorder.
There have been many fractious arguments about the differences between a fan and a supporter over the years, but it is well expressed in this behaviour. Many of us consider ourselves to be supporters and put the team before the individual, while allowing ourselves to ‘like’ some players more than others.
I’m perfectly happy to be critical of any Chelsea player if I think their performances warrant it, but I do so with an overriding hope that they prove me wrong, perform brilliantly and help Chelsea to be successful. The same cannot be said of the FanBoys for whom the team’s success seems to be secondary to the success of their chosen player.
In some respects, the origins of FanBoy culture began with Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, with their individual brilliance seeming to rise above any team they played for. In essence they became more like rock stars or celebrities rather than footballers playing in a team, bigger than the club or the game to a degree.
But wherever this new culture and behaviour came from, its expression via social media is a blight on the modern game and often has more serious consequences than just winding us up. The fervour and fanaticism it produces often spills over to abuse, hatred, racism and bullying of the victimised players and to anyone threatening the FanBoys concrete thinking. All aided and abetted by the poor controls of social media and the anonymity it provides.
I hold out hope that Christian Pulisic can return to the player he was under Frank Lampard until getting injured in the FA Cup final. At that time, he was easily Chelsea’s most effective and skilful player. Jorginho has been a great servant to Chelsea and has played a major part in the club’s success during his time here. Are there flaws in his game? Yes, but he deserves credit where the credit is due and let’s face it no player, or any of us for that matter are perfect (another concept that escapes the FanBoy mentality).
However, I wholeheartedly believe that the best thing for the Chelsea support as a whole and certainly the enjoyment and future sanity of Chelsea football twitter, would be for Pulisic and Jorginho to leave the club at the appropriate time. I have a feeling that their FanBoy armies would follow them out of the door and go and plague the unsuspecting supporters of the club signing them and we can all breathe a collective sigh of relief.
First published in cfcuk October 2022
