Post-World Cup Blues: How Being A Spain Fan Changed A Yankee Fan's View On The Red Sox

Iker Casillas and Spain celebrate winning the World Cup.
C/O The Guardian

I’ve always been one to get emotionally involved with my sports teams: I was in middle school in 2001—only a few months after 9/11—when my beloved Yankees lost the World Series to the Diamondbacks. I wept for hours after Luis Gonzalez’s bloop single, and I was sullen for days. In 2003, Real Madrid was narrowly edged out of the Champions League by a probably-paying-the-ref-but-shh-I-don’t-wanna-lose-my-job Juventus; I cried like a baby.

But the fact is, I’ve been lucky with my favorite teams: since 1995, I’ve celebrated at least one championship in every sport except basketball, and gotten two in most of the other ones (Real Madrid, Spain, Packers, and the aforementioned evil Yankees). Maybe this luck, and the accompanying crushing weight of high expectations, is the reason I react so badly to watching my teams lose.

You wouldn’t expect someone with my track record—that’s a lot of winning teams, and no, I’m not apologizing—to feel any empathy for (dare I say it) Red Sox fans. Simply supporting a team that seems hell-bent on crushing your dreams—for me, pre-2010 Spain, for Sox fans, pre-2004)—doesn’t necessarily make you feel for anyone else in a similar plight. In fact, it comes with this circle-the-wagons, you-don’t-get-it-man mentality: no other fans can understand that feeling of inevitability that comes with watching your cursed team.

I don’t pretend to understand the suffering that life-long Sox fans felt prior to 2004—or even the release that came with that victory. But I do feel a bit closer to some of you people (and I mean that with the utmost disdain of a good New Yorker) because I’m suffering from Post Championship Disorder, a psychological condition that I just made up that affects people whose long-suffering team recently won a title.

The disease has a slow onset. At first, you bask in the glow of your team’s success: you buy the memorabilia, those NFL films “Super Bowl XXXI: World Champion Packers” VHS compilations, shirts, hats, and “signed” balls (yes, I have all of those, no I don’t know where they are any more). Then, it passes. You start gearing up for the next season, but, other than being the defending champions, there’s something different.

It’s the fire. It’s gone. The passion’s still there, but suddenly that pit in your stomach, that “oh, shit we’re gonna lose” feeling when anything goes wrong is replaced by a new sensation—that, “we’ll pull this out, we’re the best” reaction, that expectation. Something’s not really the same: suddenly, those players that you felt so connected to before the title seem less benevolent, less self-sacrificingly team-oriented. You feel yourself growing apart from players—characters, really, because isn’t this all just a big soap opera?—that you grew attached to. Maybe it’s the ego. Or the money.

Yup, I get it Theo. C/O CBSSports.com

Hell, maybe it’s better than before. I know I wouldn’t trade the 2010 World Cup for anything—it’s the best fan moment of my life. But I also know that something about this Spain team doesn’t feel as special, as all-for-one, as it did before. I get aggravated by some of the players, tired of their attitude. Announcers annoy me when they talk about how great the team is.

I also know I’m an extreme case: I shed blood (bar fight) and tears (every World Cup until 2010) for this team. Every two years for as long as I can remember, this team ruled everything I did. Now, I have a hard time watching them play. There’s also the whole club vs. country thing, and a nationalist dynamic that I (a split citizen) have never fully dealt with. But shit, it’s all still sports right?

Watching the Sox collapse this summer, I noticed something different about Boston fans. It seemed to me like a lot of them (and I don’t mean to generalize) had lost the attitude that I used to begrudgingly respect them for: that “I know we’re fucked but, goddamnit I’m gonna stick it out and go down kicking and screaming with the boys” dynamic. I get the feeling it was replaced by s strong “fuck these overpaid assholes, if they won’t try when they’re out there, why the fuck should I care?” sentiment. But hey, what do I know.

Spain isn’t collapsing (far from it), but I still can’t shake the thought that if they did, I would be the first to say that same thing. If this team went to hell, I might jump off the boat—something I never would have done before 2010.

Now, I don’t claim to be some expert of the psychological makeup of Bostonians—Freud (and The Departed) taught me that you can’t psychoanalyze the Irish—but damn, I’d be shocked if I couldn’t find a few people who feel the same as me over on Yawkey Way.

And that’s one of the first times I’ve ever said that.

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Gabe Lezra is the co-founder of Jabroni Free Sports, and Editor-in-Chief of Managing Madrid, SBNation's Real Madrid blog. He is a columnist for SBNation.com/soccer, and his work has been featured on CNN.com, and CNN World Sport.