Yes, the game is now a shiny product that’s marketed. Yes, following EPL teams shows colonisation of our imagination. But, when teams your heart beats for become champs, you feel something that can’t be bought.

There is a specific type of joy experienced only by supporters of clubs that win something, after a very long time. This is joy tinged with disbelief, always panicked, as though it could slip away, any moment. East Bengal and Arsenal – league champions in the same season, after 22 years. Mere coincidence? The mathematics of this is so precise as to feel deliberate, as though some bored god of sporting symmetry shook off his ennui and decided it was time for the wait to end. For many like me, it feels too good to be true. Is it real, or will it, somehow, be taken away?

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