Football has never failed to excite the fans. They mourn their team’s defeat and celebrate like there is no tomorrow when there is a win.
In the last couple of years, their emotional responses have found expression in the Internet, thanks to memes. With its popularity on the rise, dedicated Facebook groups and pages have emerged to post memes.
The FIFA Under-17 World Cup has given an impetus to football-based memes with Troll Football Malayalam (TFM), arguably the first Facebook group for football-based Malayalam memes and one of the most popular, witnessing a 5% increase in its members and 31% rise in reactions to posts in the past seven days.
Memes in support of the Indian team and players have flooded the group with India’s maiden appearance in a FIFA World Cup. “We are receiving over 150 memes a day from which we select a few. Most of them are in favour of India followed by Brazil,” said Vishnu Dev, one of the admins of the TFM.
One of the most popular memes related to the world cup had the screenshot of actor Jagathy with his unique expression in the movie Minnaram wondering whether the players of the U.S. team, which took on India in the opening game, were really aged under 17. It reached close to 75,000 people while close to 300 people shared it.
Stephen John, a TFM member who posts at least two memes a week, feels that memes have become an integral part of following the game.
“It is about finding novel ways to troll without hurting sentiments,” he says.
TFM, created two-and-a-half years back, has 2.6 lakh active members with the majority of them from the football-mad district of Malappuram followed by Kochi.
