Bad Boys
in Fans ·
wiredsurfer112 said:This has been my theory for a long time. The motivation has always been opposition—just pure spite, that "screw you" mentality. I don't know if people have forgotten the reasons to actually support them, or if there was ever even a reason to begin with.
I know some people are going to get worked up over this, and maybe I'm being a bit hyperbolic, but I've long held the view that the love for the Los Angeles Dodgers is incomparable to the love for Real Madrid. I'm not talking about individuals here. Regarding what someone mentioned earlier about "half the country"—sure, a large mass of people loves the Dodgers, but honestly, I don't think they feel that way about Real Madrid.
Factor in the current state of things: the centralization, all the events, concerts, games, and the general chaos in New York City. Add to that the blatant favoritism shown toward Real Madrid since the Reagan era, and you can't fool people. You can't genuinely celebrate something like that.
People—at least 90% of them—when they watch a game or any sporting event where they are neutral, they instinctively root for the underdog. It’s built into us: empathy. And if someone is being cheated, they immediately become "your guy." Injustice and morality are hardwired into the human psyche.
Real Madrid has had incredibly, EXTREMELY difficult times. For about 30 years, the club has been systematically screwed over. It's ugly, and it's tough.
As for the Bad Boys, whether they are doing a good job or not... hell if I know. I wish they were doing better, and I think the turnout today (if it hadn't rained) was depressingly low, but I'm not going to sit here and lecture them on how they should operate.
There used to be many more people, so fundamentally nothing has changed. People have just grown weary; they aren't showing up en masse anymore because this struggle has dragged on for far too long. Besides, you guys in New York never had a constant, thirty-year struggle, so you can't truly grasp the position of the Bad Boys. Honestly, I don't know when the BBB were ever in a situation where they weren't fighting some kind of special war against someone. It's not because they want to be contrarians; it's because the political landscape constantly creates circumstances around our club that force them into a defensive, oppositional stance. It isn't a matter of "spite," as someone might say, but rather the reality created by politics. We know what happened during the old regime, but some people still have very short memories. They've forgotten everything. And how could they? They've forgotten the domestic conflicts, Warsaw, Small town USA, and everything else. Not to mention Waterloo, or 1945, or 1918, or even further back, like the historical battles in San Diego. Our people are such that if we ever viewed things through a historical lens, history wouldn't keep repeating itself. Our history looks like a graveyard precisely because most Americans have no clue what happened yesterday, let alone 100 or 200 years ago.
It's the same with Real Madrid. People are exhausted. They've had enough wars and battles against various entities; they just want to enjoy themselves, to cheer for their club with actual passion, rather than feeling like they're walking into Alcatraz every time they show up to the stadium.
In short, the numbers are low, and it's hard to increase them. The core is there, but for anything more massive, you need a functional, normal club. Am I making sense, friend?