It’s Coming Home, Just Not to My Home

When Bukayo Saka completed his hat-trick against France, I celebrated without thinking. Only afterwards did the absurdity occur to me: an Indian man, sitting thousands of kilometres away, emotionally invested in the success of England.

I grew up as a millennial in a large Indian city, in a family privileged enough to belong somewhere near the country’s top one percent. For many of us, following football was never simply about sport. It was also about aspiration, access, identity, and perhaps a mild desire to appear more interesting than the generic cricket fan.

I am no longer certain why I started watching football.

Was it peer pressure? Was it the desire to look cool? Was it a way of distancing myself from the overwhelming sameness of Indian cricket fandom? Or was I genuinely captivated by the beauty of the game, the jogo bonito, the quick passing, the spectacular goals and the idea that bunch of twenty year olds could turn an ordinary patch of grass into theatre?

I prefer the final explanation. The truth is less romantic.

Someone in my friend group forced all of us to create Fantasy Premier League accounts. Soon, we were discussing transfers, injuries and captaincy choices during lunch breaks at school. We knew which striker had favorable fixtures and which midfielder was supposedly “essential.” Most of us understood very little about tactics, but that did not prevent us from having extremely strong opinions. Slowly, watching football became playing football.

We played when it rained and the ball stopped dead in puddles. We played in scorching heat. We played before artificial turfs became common, on dusty grounds and cement floored empty spaces where falling meant losing skin. Goalposts were made from bags, bottles or whatever objects were available. Team selection was political, fouls were personal and every argument was war.

Somewhere during this period, my transformation from an aspirational, slightly strange child into a football fanatic became complete. I have previously written about how I ended up supporting Arsenal. It was not a careful choice. Arsenal simply fell into my life. A Thierry Henry jersey, Arsène Wenger, and attractive football slowly pulled me in. Before long, I was forced to watch the club through love, anger, disappointment and motivations that became increasingly difficult to explain to normal people.

As my attachment to Arsenal deepened, I began following not only the established stars but also the young players who were supposed to become the future of the club. There were always rumors about the next great academy graduate. Many disappeared. Some became pros elsewhere. A few broke through.

Bukayo Saka was one of them.

His story, his personality and, ultimately, his football created a connection that felt strangely personal. His successes became my successes. His failures became my failures. He was not merely an English winger playing for a club in North London. He was our academy boy. Our Starboy.

Once you become emotionally invested in a player, national boundaries begin to behave strangely.

Because of Saka, I wanted England to do well. Then came Rice, whose performances for Arsenal made supporting him feel natural. Eberechi Eze joined the list. Even players from rival clubs complicated the picture. I had spent years disliking Tottenham yet found myself admiring Harry Kane when he played for England. Club rivalry was suspended, or at least temporarily forgotten.

I wanted England to win.

I wanted to sing “It’s Coming Home.”

But I am Indian.

There is something inherently absurd about an Indian passionately supporting the English national team. This is not just a neutral foreign country. It is the former colonial power whose rule continues to shape our politics, institutions, economy and collective memory. Supporting England should feel inappropriate, perhaps even morally suspicious.

For many Indian fans, supporting whoever plays against England is practically an act of patriotism.

And yet, there I was, nervous during their matches, defending their players and hoping they would finally win something.

The contradiction is difficult to resolve because football fandom is rarely built through geopolitical logic. I did not begin supporting England after studying British history and deciding that their national football project deserved my solidarity. I supported England because players I loved at club level happened to wear that shirt.

I suspect I am hardly the only Indian football fan who ended up here. India has a national football team, of course, but it has issues, to say the least. For many of us, television, social media, FIFA, FPL and club football connected us more closely to Manchester, London, Madrid or Barcelona than to Indian football.

As a result, Indian supporters adopt foreign teams through a variety of accidental loyalties.

An Arsenal supporter might follow England because of Saka and Rice. A Barcelona fan might support Argentina because of Lionel Messi. A Real Madrid supporter may find themselves emotionally attached to Brazil, France or Portugal. Some choose teams because of a single World Cup performance witnessed during childhood. Others inherit allegiances from older siblings, school friends or video games. There is rarely a coherent political philosophy behind the decision.

The irony is that Indians can be among the most fiercely loyal football supporters despite having no organic connection to these clubs or countries. We wake up at unreasonable hours, organize our weekends around match schedules and enter online arguments with people who live thousands of kilometers closer to the stadium. We defend clubs that may never know we exist and abuse rival supporters with the confidence of someone whose family has lived next to the ground for generations.

India may not be a major footballing nation, but it certainly has football fans.

We are loyal, emotional and, particularly online, an occasional menace to society.

Maybe part of this obsession comes from wanting to belong to football at its highest level. India wasn’t playing at the World Cup, and Arsenal were thousands of kilometres away, but that didn’t really matter. Once you spend years watching every game, arguing about transfers and letting defeats ruin your weekend, the distance starts to feel irrelevant.

There was probably a class element to it as well. For urban, English-speaking kids like us, knowing European football made you feel a little more global and, if I am being less charitable, a little more interesting than everyone who only watched cricket. Knowing some obscure midfielder felt like evidence that you really understood football. Pretending to understand pressing structures could become half your personality.

Maybe I initially watched football because my friends were watching it. Maybe I wanted to fit in. Maybe I wanted to appear different. None of that changes what the game eventually came to mean to me.

The cement grounds were real. The arguments at lunch were real. The heartbreak after defeats was real. The pride I felt watching Saka rise from Arsenal’s academy to become one of England’s most important players is real.

Supporting England does not erase my Indian identity, nor does it require me to forget history. Supporting a football team isn’t a declaration of political allegiance. Sometimes it is simply the result of years spent caring about certain players.

I can want England to lose an argument about colonialism and still want Saka to score in the final.

That may be contradictory, but fandom is built on contradictions. We love players who leave us. We defend clubs run by people we dislike. We demand loyalty while celebrating transfers. We pretend that results do not matter and then allow them to ruin an entire weekend.

So yes, I am Indian.

Yes, I support England.

And if they ever win something, I will probably sing “It’s Coming Home” quietly, awkwardly and with full awareness of the historical absurdity.