Sports fandom brings out the best in us…and the worst. Lessons in loyalty are superfluous, everyone knows fidelity is a pre-requisite on Planet Sport. Hope and faith make up the unlikely oxygen that fuel a sports fan. Ask any Arsenal supporter. His last memories of EPL silverware are from a distant summer of 2004, and yet he persists, cloaked in the belief that the invincibles shall return to their throne.

Sports unite, they forge us to a cause greater than ourselves. Ask my friend, who, on the night of April 2 2011, felt compelled to rush out into the streets of Bombay to celebrate India’s World Cup victory with strangers he would have otherwise been wary of on the local trains. And sport inspires. I only have to look at Rafa Nadal to learn to handle failure with grace, and his face is what pops up when I have to jog that extra mile.

And then sport brings out the worst. Biases so ingrained they meld into the truth, racism and jingoism at their extremes, and sometimes a tendency to lose sight of a game’s beauty for a team’s pride.

And then, there are times when none of that matters. When all you do is sit back and sigh, and watch. I had prepared myself, on the night of 28th May, for a painful 90 minutes of agony as I settled to watch the Champions League final. The pain was delivered in waves of anesthetizing beauty. Really, there was nothing you could do but shrug and pick your jaw off the floor. Barcelona stamped their masterclass over their sport, and they made us forget what sport has turned us into. Instead, they reminded us of why we turned to sport.

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