Martin Devlin: When watching sports takes you to the dark side

Sitting in the office today has provided the best possible example of how sport and sport observing can lead you to the dark side.

We all have aspects of our own personality that challenge us.

Is not it? Or is it just me?

The sport I find makes me go to places where rational men are afraid to walk.

This is the English Premier League Football, with Everton vs. Man City, which offers the most special situation. Everton fans were rather happy if their team lost while Manchester United fans spent 90 minutes cheering wildly on their most hated rival, City.

And why? All because of Liverpool.

But they do not play, I hear you say. Exactly, and that's what I mean.

My team (Manchester United) not only did not play, we did not even participate in this title race, but the match today meant being totally distracted at work until the final whistle in the hope of a result that would allow City to come back in the lead and to go to the shelter. another group from Merseyside, Liverpool.

My hate, and yes it's hate, because this club dates back to my debut in the league in 1975.

At that time, scousers won title after title. It happened so often that we called it sunrise.

The three certainties of life were death, taxes, and Liverpool's victory in the league.

But all this stopped in 1990. Twenty-eight years later, they are desperate to win it again, while the rest of us, motivated by an irrational and childish pathetic schadenfreude, are also praying for it. choke as they did in 2009 and 2014.

Man City won the game this morning to come back in the lead but have played one more.

With a dozen games to play, this same sad situation will be replayed and replayed several times in the coming weeks.

Cultivated men find lame excuses for their lack of sportsmanship and bad behavior, while knowing that, as foolish as it may seem to any neutral observer, it is as satisfying as ever sport.

Tell me that I am immature and that I can only agree. It's something that I can never justify and that I can only explain that by quoting this old military phrase "The enemy of your enemy is your friend".

Never more true than when he is attached to the sport.