Real Madrid: Since When Does Hate Equal Support?

Imagine being against a player or a manager so much that you would be okay watching the club that you supposedly love crumble just so he can be sacked or sold. Unfortunately, that’s becoming the world that we live in today.

Football has touched all of our lives in one way or another and has seen us express emotions that none of us even knew existed. Being a Real Madrid fan in particular, the highs and lows follow each other very closely because of the expectations of the club.

It’s not enough to play well and to reach a final of the competition. Winning is what matters and that is something ingrained into the players, the staff and the fans. This mentality is what makes Real Madrid the greatest club in world football. However, it’s sad to see that many of their “fans” would actually love to watch the club fail simply because a decision that they wanted didn’t happen.

Zinedine Zidane’s re-appointment was not a popular one among all the fans. (To be fair, no decision will be accepted by everyone and therefore you make the decision that you believe will truly benefit the club.)

With the return of the legendary French manager who defied all possibilities during his time with the club, many “fans” weren’t happy with the hiring and were looking forward to watching the club crumble so that he could be exposed for the apparent fraud that he is. It’s worth noting here that they are the same fans that celebrate the success of the club even when he is the manager.

Another recent example is Gareth Bale. These “fans” would be more than happy to watch him fail and see the club possibly under-perform.

This doesn’t make any sense to me. To be clear, disliking a player or a manager is normal. You’re not forced to like every single player that joins the club. Wanting someone else such as Jose Mourinho or Mauricio Pochettino instead of Zinedine Zidane is normal as well; you’re allowed to have preferences.

However, when all is said and done, we all want the same thing. You want these other managers or other players to join the club because the aim is for the team to succeed. Just because they could possibly succeed with someone else, it doesn’t mean that you aren’t able to give credit where it’s due.

Search “#ZidaneOut” on Twitter at any given time, and you’ll see what I mean. Many of these attacks are personal. People criticize the player or manager and their families or beliefs and there is no excuse as to why that is allowed to happen. What gives us the right to go against someone’s upbringing or their past because they aren’t performing well on the pitch or even worse, because they aren’t the one that we want at the team even though they’re doing well? Unfortunately, this has slowly become the reality that we are living in. Zidane is not here to ensure that he’s liked or supported by everyone. His job is to make Real Madrid win trophies – something he has done in the past and that no other manager has done for the club as much as he has. Being against him to that extent is baffling.

This goes past Zidane and Bale. People are wishing injury, illness or death to a player just because he’s playing poorly or even because he’s part of the starting eleven can be seen on pretty much any given matchday.  Imagine receiving death threats just because your manager has decided to pick you to do your job. Sitting back behind a screen and insulting a player’s appearance or hoping they get injured or worse doesn’t make you a fan. It makes you a horrible person. Just because you sit anonymously behind a computer screen, it doesn’t give you the right to say such heinous things to other human beings, and especially to those that you haven’t even met as they try to simply do their job. We tend to forget that this is their jobs. Just like we get up and go to work in order to make a living, that is exactly what they’re doing too.

We all support Real Madrid. We all want them to succeed. Since when was that not enough? Criticize your hearts out, get angry at losing, make your predictions, analyze the games and share your thoughts and opinions. That is the beauty of football. Social Media could have been used for us to share our opinions and live through the emotions of watching our favorite team play together from all parts of the world but instead we use it to spread hate. That isn’t and shouldn’t be okay.