In case anyone wonders who is the “old-bones” born in the 1960’s and has supported Bayern for over 30 years, that is me.
Before everyone curse me for burdening you with a long message in English, allow me to apologize and explain. I was born and raised in Hong Kong and moved to North America in the 1980’s. While I can read and write Chinese with pen on paper, I never learned to type Chinese characters. (I really should make this my signature line, so I don’t have to repeat it every time I post anything longer than one line.)
Anyway, here is a brief history of a “fossil grade” Bayern and Germany fan.
The 1974 world cup was the first one shown on Hong Kong TV with good and timely coverage. (My parents even allowed me to get up in the middle of the night to watch the live broadcast of the final!) Johan Cruyff's Holland was the fashionable team supported by the cool kids. Since I was not a cool kid, I decided to support Holland's main rivals, the uncool West Germans.
Because six of the 1974 world champions were Bayern players, I also started to follow Bayern, just through newspapers and magazines. I did not get to see Bayern play regularly until the 1977-78 season, when one of the TV channels in HK started showing one Bundeliga match each week. A Bayern game was shown at least once every 2 weeks. (That happened to be Beckenbauer's last season as a Bayern player, so I was very lucky and privileged to have seen him play for Bayern.)
It all changed when I went to university in the US in the early 1980's, and then emigrated to Canada. North America was (and still is) a football desert. And back then the internet was the stuff of science fiction. For the next 10+ years, I learned to watch American football, and was able to see only one Bayern game. (That was at the Olympic stadium when I was traveling through Europe.) But I tried to follow Bayern's fortunes, through what I could find on newspapers, and from the English "World Soccer" magazine, which usually arrives in Canada 6 weeks after it is published in England.
Things got a little better after the 1994 World Cup in the US. There were more "soccer" on TV, and I could see Bayern play when they made it to the later rounds of the Champions League (or played an English team in the earlier rounds). The first Bayern game I saw in North America was the 1994/95 CL semi-final 2nd leg between Bayern and Van Gaal's Ajax. (Bayern lost 5-1, not a happy occasion.) It is only for the last couple years, after I’ve discovered internet streaming of games, that I can see Bundesliga games regularly.
So, I may have been a Bayern fan for over 35 years, I have not seen them play as often or as regularly as many of my young friends here. It has not been easy following Bayern from the football desert in North America, and I have not vowed to love Bayern forever, but somehow I am still here, cheering for them.
No one ever forced me to support Bayern. I don’t feel the club or the players owe me anything. Over the years, there were disappointments and heartbreaks, but the excitement and joy of supporting Bayern far outweigh the disappointment and heartbreaks. Overall, I just feel I am lucky to have somehow ended up a Bayern fan, and I am grateful for the joy and excitement Bayern have brought me and, I am sure, will continue to bring me. |
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