KOLKATA: After a month of football fiesta and an unforgettable final match, football lovers in the city who have been engrossed with matches every evening felt it would take a while to return to a life without the Messi-Mbappe-Neymer mania that had gripped them.
Entrepreneur Uddyalok Roychowdhury, who has not missed a minute of game during the tournament, said he felt a knot in his stomach, an emptiness around 8.30pm on Monday evening when he would leave everything behind and concentrate on the matches.
“During the two breaks, one after the quarter-finals and the other after the semi-finals, the evenings seemed rather purposeless. But at least then, there were the expectations of matches lined up. On Monday evening, I watched the replay of the match. Over the next couple of days, I will watch a few more match highlights and then probably slip into the pre-World Cup routine,” said Roychowdhury.
Roychowdhury’s son Raunak, who is an IT professional and plays five-a-side soccer matches on artificial turfs that have sprung up across the city, said he will now wait for various European leagues to resume to see the exciting players back in action. “What we saw on Sunday evening was mind-blowing. It is rare to see such free-flowing football in a World Cup final. After such a high dose of adrenaline, it was obviously a purposeless evening on Monday,” he said.
Techie Souvik Basu, an ardent Argentina supporter, is yet to recover from the euphoria of watching Messi create history. “It was too good to be true and I couldn’t sleep the entire night in excitement. Since Monday morning, I have been feeling rather depressed since over the last three weeks, I have got used to following Messi and praying for him. There was always an Argentina match to look ahead to but now there’s a big void,” said Basu.
This vacuum is inevitable, especially since this World Cup saw a series of exciting matches rarely seen in previous editions, said psychiatrist Jayranjan Ram. “Till the last minute of the final, there was excitement, twists and turns, brilliant goals and unexpected turnarounds. The unifying power of football was evident over the last four weeks as the games were enjoyed by one and all. But we must tell ourselves that all good things must come to an end. The World Cup may have ended but the memories will linger and should egg us on,” said Ram.
Hospitality executive Samit Ghosh, who rarely switches the TV on but makes an exception once in four years when the World Cup is underway, returned to his usual routine on Monday. “The wait for four years begins. In the meantime, it is back to focusing on work,” said Ghosh.
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