Loving Flames at owners’ risk
It is not love. The affair between Flames and their fans is what, in his platinum-selling novel The Road Less Travelled, M Scott Peck defines as passive dependency syndrome (PDS).
The more your partner breaks your heart, the more you ‘love’ them—at least that is what you think.
In such affairs, the abused party is in actual fact a parasite.
Love, Peck argues, exists when “two people love each other only when they are quite capable of living without each other but choose to live with each other.”
In this respect, the relationship between the often heartbroken fans and the Flames is PDS.
The more the Flames disappoint, as they did in earning draws with Namibia then Kenya last week when required to win at all cost, the more the fans ‘love’ the team.
The very same fans who after last week’s Namibia game vowed never to step on the Kamuzu Stadium, thronged the giant arena again.
Again, even after being tortured by the sight of their sorry team giving away two soft goals to Kenya, the fans are back in the believing mode.
Suddenly, everyone thinks the current Flames can win in Nigeria this September and sneak to the 2014 World Cup final qualifying phase.
This despite that no Malawian football team has ever won in Nigeria. Suddenly, the argument is that nothing is impossible in football.
You have to admire the depth of the fans’ hope in a team with such a dismal away record.
That is how powerful PDS is. It is addictive and it hurts.
The thing is that there are few or nothing in Malawi football to massage the fans’ pride.
What with local clubs unable to participate in international competitions since 2004?
Malawi simply has no world class football stars as is the case even in non-entities in world football such as Mozambique, have in Europe big leagues.
I am for lowering the bar of expectations and aiming for Cosafa Cup glory because, with the Flames’ circumstances, that is the only realistic target.
Lowering the bar would help the fans pick positives in the growing rubble of the Flames’ draws, the coaches would sing their rebuilding song patiently and the pressure would be taken off the players.
