Well, EURO 2008 in Austria and Switzerland is alive and kicking with the Turks pulling up a habit of scoring in the dying minutes, the Italians with their old, playacting team and defending champion Greece being...err....Greeks.
This is the time of the year that everyone in Malaysia have been waiting for. Every 2 years (if you include the world cup) Malaysians who always chanted "WE LOVE BEING MALAYSIAN" will turn their patriotism up a notch by supporting countries they most probably never been to. Their patriotism towards their "adopted" countries are undivided, this can be seen by their willingness to brave the early hours going to mamaks to watch footie on the big screen ( which most of them are not actually BIG), endless reasons given to their bosses for coming to work late (e.g. my alarm went off suddenly, I'm getting that fixed, my neighbour double parked my car so I can't get out and stuff) and losing lots of money. Lots and lots of them.
Jerseys. Yeah. Go ask Al-Ikhsan people how much sale did they got from the sale of EURO team jerseys (England not included). And ask them again how much Malaysian stripe jersey did they manage to sell.
"Apa itu kelab? Malaysia aa? Itu yang ada belang belang hitam kuning ka?"
Speaking of Malaysian jersey, I was so proud when I spotted Jason Lo donning Malaysia national jersey on tele. He's one Malaysian that really cares. Wait, he's Malaysian? Eh, what gives?
There's another trend that been going on among Malaysians when it comes to footie. Remember when Brazil was the world champion? How many people you can see AFTER the tournament walking around in Brazil jersey? Remember Thierry Henry and the invinsible Arsenal? Well, every Malaysian turning French then. Then came in the certain someone in the name of Abramovich. Wow, I didn't know Chelsea had this much supporter in Malaysia.
The trend of Malaysians is simple. Whoever winning, we will support. Malaysians hate to be on the loosing side. I did some interviews among some hard core supporters (riiiiiiiiiiiight) who they rooting for this year's EURO. Well, average answer: Dutch (yeah, they're in form), Germany (lucky bastards) and Spain (senor Torres and Villa). Oi, mana France? There's alot of their supporters when they won the world cup. Oh yeah, they're kicked out. Mana Portugal supporters from previous EURO? Owh, tak ada Figo tak shiok (dah tua). Mana England supporters? "England? Kami tengok Premier League saja. Team tak tengok".
Right.
I even got this one answer "ok, aku sokong Spain, tapi kalau diorang kalah aku sokong Belanda, kalau kalah jugak.................."
Wow, multi citizenship. I got to get one of those.
FAM, take note. The key word is W-I-N. Simple. W-I-N. No? Understand no English? Pakcik pakcik MENTERI, menang. Kita nak menang. Jangan membazir duit buat lawatan. Bayar gaji pemain. Bayar hutang maintenance stadium. Maybe from their tinted BMWs they can't see that our national team is a laughing stock of the world. Or maybe they just don't care. Eh, what gives?
So you see, we Malaysians are lucky. We are lucky enough to be blessed with the multi nationality community (Indons, Myanmars, Banglas and some other cricketing countries), but then we are even more blessed with the freedom to choose any other nationality for a period of one month in every two years.
Proud to be Malaysian (sometimes Brazilian, English, Dutch bla bla bla.....)
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