I happened to read somewhere that David Beckam used to lose a soccer match before he reached his fame status, and was cancelled to eternity by literally everyone. It got to the point that he received death threats, became a caricature for humiliation from both the general public and the press, and even had to be escorted to the next match by the police.

I suddenly realized that I can see the same horrible thing in other places, particularly my country. Here people associate soccer with some weird kind of patriotic pride, especially when my country plays against other countries. When a team wins, they are expected to be lavished with praise from everyone and people go down the street to celebrate for “the pride of the country”. And when a team loses, oftentimes people would blame the loss for the unfairness of the referee, the devilish cheating players from the other side, or anything similar. I’ve seen incidents of foreign players, and even a referee, being cyber-bullied just because my country lost. Some people would go on the Internet to start war with the opposing country before or after a match. There was even one incident when people review-bombed a poll for two best players, one in my country and the other in another country, and people were expected to participate in the review-bombing or else they weren’t considered patriots.

I just can’t understand this strange attitude toward sport. I can understand rooting for your favorite teams and getting upset when they lose, but why make such a big deal about it? A team winning or losing doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. No one is harmed physically or mentally when a team loses, no one is taken hostage, no country is invaded and no freedom is taken. The worst thing to come from it is just some disappointment and bruised ego, and then pretty much everyone can move on. Why take sport so seriously as if it’s an actual military battle?