Tribal Identification

While Manchester City inextricably lost 3-2 to Crystal Palace today and Liverpool take a 4pt lead as Premier League leaders at Christmas, Tottenham play later today against Everton to stay in the chase behind the two league leaders.  The game against Everton is statistically more likely to be draw since after 17 games Tottenham have not drawn a single game and that run won't last all season long.   A defeat would signal a two horse race with Liverpool and Manchester City duking it out for the title, but a win at Goodison Park means Spurs will trail Liverpool by only six points - and due to their home ground not fully constructed, the temporary move back to Wembley Stadium means that for the second half of this season, Spurs will have played 3 home games less, having started a run of several away games to begin the season. 

Maybe 10 years ago I would treat lost points against Everton as a dagger into the heart, but then I would watch every second of soccer that was broadcast on television.  The first time I went to see Spurs play live at White Hart Lane, I was surprised by how small the seats were and the awful condition of the washrooms - thankfully we had arrived really early, I shudder what I would have found if I had to take a nature call at half-time stage of a match.  The new stadium is something I look forward to visiting once it actually has been given approval to host matches. That may still be 3 or 4 months ahead, but the meaning of going to the Tottenham ground is far less embodied by my soul, then when I was a youngster. 

The 1-1 draw with Barcelona coupled with the unexpected loss of points by Inter Milan at home against PSV in the Champions League does mean that against the odds, Tottenham will be playing Borrusia Dortmund in a Champions League Round of 16 home and away match.  When Spurs had got only 1pt from their first three matches, I did carry a bit of a sinking feeling of disappointment - so when Lucas Moura scored with five minutes to go, that was beyond expectations and Spurs did manage to grab 7 of the remaining 9 points in their group game.  The following Saturday Spurs eked out a last minute winner against a dogged Burnley team and beat them 1-0 at Wembley.  This is a match I did not watch live and simply saw fast-forwarding the recording on our Cable TV box.   I now have substituted watching soccer games live for other pursuits such as reading or engaging the internet and reading online.   That is not something I did a few years ago and so that shows me that my tribal identification has waned, though I still dig the beautiful game.

The only thing that does hit a nerve is that one of our boys is a Liverpool supporter and is highly tribally connected to his team, enough for him to be heard at all three levels of our home when his team scores.  At least he is not like one of my cousins in England whose room is a shrine to Liverpool and whose very identity is totally consumed by what Liverpool do or do not do.  There are fans of other sports I know who bring their sports wear to work and that is all they seem to talk about - which begs the question why they were hired in the first place, because for them, work is secondary to their team !

Tribal identification has been studied by others so it is not simply a phenomena that I am trying to understand and in this case Desmond Morris looked at the world of soccer in his book "Soccer Tribe" and he views it as hunting drive evolution :