Thrilling Fight Back: Football is the Winner

Quiet long back, one Malayalam sports journalist wrote –if you watch a football match, you should watch it complete. Never try to leave in between because you might be losing the best fight back part. He was talking about one match between Paraguay and some other country in a world cup where Paraguay were trailing with two goal deficit and less than twenty minutes left. Most of his journalist colleagues made up their mind about the winner and result and decided to leave the press room and this was same with the crowd watching the match, nearly half of the supports of Paraguay He writes, in the last fifteen minutes with an introduction of three substitutes, the course of the game changed. I don’t remember the end result of the game but can recapture the end part of his writing. ‘After the final whistle, I looked around in the press room. It was almost empty but some senior journalists were there who enjoyed watching the game. One elderly journalist from them walked towards me and appreciated my patience and told me that the passion towards the game is the best quality of a sports journalist and watching till the end of the game proves it. Before leaving the room, he gifted me a pen’.

While reading through the news about the league cup in England, the match between Reading and Arsenal, I was remembering the words of Ramachandaran. In the first half, one team is trailing for 4-0 and they make a comeback in the second half with a galore of goals. I don’t want to get into the quality of the game whether such scoring game shows the weakness of both teams or because of their attacking quality in abundance. Leave those things to football pundits. I feel pity about the audience, especially Arsenal supports, who decided to leave the stadium after their team conceded 4 goals without any reply.

Couple of years back, I watched the Premier League match between Newcastle united and Arsenal which ended up in a 4-4 draw. It was an amazing comeback from deficit of 0-4 by Newcastle. This was nothing less than that one, only difference is in that game Arsenal fielded their first team players and this time they tried their luck with second string players along with some senior stars. Good part of the game was Reading showed the sportsman spirit by keeping the game open, including their defense. They never tried to shut down the game after scoring two goals and tried to attack more than ever. Unlike Chelsea in the champions league or Arsenal 15 years back, they played for scoring more goals and make the game attractive. They could have killed the game by defending the rest of the time by packing up all players in their own D, in Jose Morinho’s words ‘parking the team bus in front of goalpost. Thanks Reading.

Arsenal won the match which is supposed to be in their last priority. More than that, their two strikers who were completely neglected showed some kind of form after long time. Theo Walcott and Chamak played well after long time and helped their team to escape from big humiliation.