Fans that Boo their Own Team
Recently England Captain Steven Gerrard said that he would boo England if he was a supporter as well. This was probably a way to connect with the fans, who feel they were cheated by a horribly performing England football team. The question arises here that, is it ever alright for fans to boo their own team and their own players? All teams play poorly sometimes and no team can win all the time, but England’s football team has been showing some extremely poor form of late. Let’s see if the trend of booing your own players can end sometime soon.
England’s football team has been performing very poorly in international football matches. The reasons are many and varied but a team’s fans should always stand behind their team and support it no matter what, right? Well not necessarily. The England captain, Gerrard, has said that he would probably boo the England team as well if he was a spectator sitting in the crowd for the team’s upcoming match against Hungary. Saying that the team probably expected to be booed, the captain felt the team had to accept it and move on. They had to take the humiliation on the chin and win back the trust of the fans. If the team played through the booing and managed to win back some fans by giving a resounding performance against Hungary, they might be able to show the fans that they had suffered only a temporary setback and were now back on track.
Some writers have said that it is very bad manners to boo your own team and it is just mean. But what does a fan do when a very good team stars to continuously play very poorly. They have paid some hard earned money to come to the games and support the team and if the team keeps playing badly and shows no remorse about the fact, then fans should boo them. If games were free and fans could watch them at their leisure then it would be no problem if a team plays badly. What the fans want to see is their favourite team try their hardest. Then if they lose it is not a problem. What no fan wants to see is their team not even trying to win and losing by a huge margin.
Can booing by fans actually make players of a team play worse than they normally would? It is human psychology that if someone supports a person it pushes them to greatness, but if a person continues to berate and bring down an individual that person will not perform as they should. If fans continue to support their teams and its players till the end, it might just inspire them to do great things and perform wonderfully. People always do better when they know people believe in them. If a team thinks that no one believes in them, they will become very de-motivated and they will not be able to play to their full potential. Fans have to realise that the players on their favourite teams are human and they respond to praise and criticism just like the rest of us.
We should all go out and support our favourite teams if they are going through a bad patch. We should realise that players will start to perform better if we show them our support and give them praise for their efforts. If fans think that a player really does not deserve their praise or support because he is arrogant or does not show any sort of remorse when his team loses, then by all means fans should show him some serious hatred and boo him till the cows come home. Most fans do not boo their own teams because they feel that this is a team that is made up of their players and they feel a distinct connection with them and with the team. For them booing the team would be like booing themselves and that would really not make sense. Now all that needs to be done is to get all the fans on the same page, the worst thing is to have some fans booing a team and some supporting it. If all boo it then at least we have some unity. That unity can slowly be converted into support in time.
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