Fans of the Indian Super League (ISL) team Kerala Blasters FC (KBFC) hardly had as much excitement watching their club of late as they had mobilising support for their team on twitter over the past more than a fortnight.
Since reaching their second ISL finals in 2016, the city-based football club had three successive barren seasons leaving their legions of fans, one of the most vociferous and animated ones to support a football team anywhere in the world, crestfallen.
They sprang back to life, thanks to an unofficial contest being held by a little known twitter handle, claimed to be based in the U.S., to find out the football club with the largest fan base.
Apart from KBFC, another ISL team, Chennaiyin FC, was also part of the contest modelled in the format of a football tournament featuring 64 football clubs from across the world. While Chennaiyin FC fell early, KBFC stormed past Mexican club Tigres and the French giants Olympique Marseille in the first two rounds by amassing 59% and 54.6% of votes respectively.
The third round tie with Persib Bandung, one of the oldest and biggest professional football clubs in Indonesia, turned out to be neck-and-neck fight with both sides going into the final hour of the polling with 50% votes each. However, KBFC emerged victorious in the cliffhanger with 51% votes and will now take on Turkish club Galatasaray in the fourth round.
“It started like any normal banter between rival fans before it descended into a full blown social media war with the memes and comments often turning out to be provocative,” said Dilip Attuvallil, a KBFC fan.
KBFC shortly emerged as a national symbol of sorts and support poured in even from fans of domestic rivals like FC Goa and East Bengal.
Manjapada aka Yellow Army, the official fans’ club of KBFC, adopted a methodology, which they claimed was akin to the one being used by nations to fight the pandemic. “Our campaign to mobilise support started with our fans, then their primary contacts and then the larger community just like nations focus on the infected and their primary contacts before stepping into check community spread. They have a fan base five times our size and despite that we put up such a great fight,” said Somu P. Joseph, working committee member of Manjapada.
Nevin Thomas, founder of Kalpanthu, a popular YouTube channel on Indian football, attributed the popularity of the contest to the prevailing times. “With football leagues grounding to halt across the world, it was perhaps perfectly timed to engage football-starved fans. Also, with fans of European football giants not taking it seriously, fans of lesser clubs had their time under the sun,” he said.
Mr. Joseph sees the contest as a way of rejuvenating the fans and furthering the reach of the club beyond the country. “At least, our rivals who voted in thousands would try to find out more about our club and that can only be good for us,” he said.
