Franny Lee's Barrel Chest
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- 23 Aug 2005
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You might think not, and Bill Shankly famously said "Football isn't a matter of life and death...it's much more important than that". Most people take that statement with a pinch of salt and down the years it has been used over and over again to prove how people think too much about football and the fact that "It's only a game".
I've been thinking about this and although you cannot possibly compare losing a football match to losing a loved one, there are, actually, quite a lot of parallels. Who here feels thoroughly miserable if City lose a game, particularly in appalling circumstances? If you take the Kubler-Ross model of grief which explains how we feel when we are bereaved you can see the similarities. I'll try and put them into a footballing analogy to see if anyone has any thoughts. Apologies if anyone has lost anyone recently and finds this offensive. It's not meant to be.
1. Denial. At first people cannot believe that someone has died. In the same way, people cannot believe how we can have lost a game in which we had a half time lead and how badly we played to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
2. Anger. When someone dies, people look round for someone to blame. The hospital, the doctor, whoever. It's the same when you lose a game. Balotelli was shit, Kompany made a bad challenge, Why didn't Mancini bring on Aguero?
3. Bargaining. If only I'd have done this, or that, maybe they might not have died. In the same way, we move onto trying to analyse just what could have avoided that defeat. I'd do something different next time.
4. Depression. Once it sinks in that the person is no longer there, depression starts as life without that person is faced. In the same way, the loss of a trophy or 3 points is a hard knock to take and people are miserable for days.
5. Acceptance. In the end, you realise that the person isn't coming back and that life goes on. It's the same in football. What's happened has happened, nothing you can do about it, look forward to the next game.
It rather depends on how seriously you take your football I suppose, but I reckon lots of people go through that cycle after a loss. Let's hope there aren't too many this coming season.
I've been thinking about this and although you cannot possibly compare losing a football match to losing a loved one, there are, actually, quite a lot of parallels. Who here feels thoroughly miserable if City lose a game, particularly in appalling circumstances? If you take the Kubler-Ross model of grief which explains how we feel when we are bereaved you can see the similarities. I'll try and put them into a footballing analogy to see if anyone has any thoughts. Apologies if anyone has lost anyone recently and finds this offensive. It's not meant to be.
1. Denial. At first people cannot believe that someone has died. In the same way, people cannot believe how we can have lost a game in which we had a half time lead and how badly we played to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
2. Anger. When someone dies, people look round for someone to blame. The hospital, the doctor, whoever. It's the same when you lose a game. Balotelli was shit, Kompany made a bad challenge, Why didn't Mancini bring on Aguero?
3. Bargaining. If only I'd have done this, or that, maybe they might not have died. In the same way, we move onto trying to analyse just what could have avoided that defeat. I'd do something different next time.
4. Depression. Once it sinks in that the person is no longer there, depression starts as life without that person is faced. In the same way, the loss of a trophy or 3 points is a hard knock to take and people are miserable for days.
5. Acceptance. In the end, you realise that the person isn't coming back and that life goes on. It's the same in football. What's happened has happened, nothing you can do about it, look forward to the next game.
It rather depends on how seriously you take your football I suppose, but I reckon lots of people go through that cycle after a loss. Let's hope there aren't too many this coming season.