When Karl Marx stated many years ago that “Religion is the opium of the people”, he didn’t know that people will rephrase it in later years It has been recoined today to state that football is the opium of the masses. That football can people temporarily forget their sufferings caused by bad governance, especially in Nigeria.

When the European season went on break last May, football fans temporarily embraced the new format FIFA Club World Cup which saw 32 teams from all the continents vying for the top prize.

Against their expectations, Chelsea who barely made the cut for the 2025/2026 UEFA Champions League beat PSG, who won the Champions League for the first time a few weeks earlier to become the first champions of the revised competition.

After that, fans went quiet because only European football, especially the English Premier League, EPL, believed to be the best league in the world, gives them excitement.

Nigerian fans were not even interested in the ongoing African Nations Championship, CHAN, were the Super Eagles B team were featuring.

That they were battered 4-0 by Sudan after losing 0-1 to Congo in their first game didn’t cause much furore as they didn’t expect much from them. The viewing centres across the country that went silent like graveyards these past seven weeks however, came alive again on Friday when the season began officially in England.

A week earlier, the EPL season was ushered in with the Community Shield that featured the Premier League Champions, Liverpool and the FA Cup kings, Crystal Palace, with Palace running away with the Shield after a penalty shoot-out following their 2-2 draw after full time.

What makes the football season crazy is the noise surrounding the bets by rival fans of the top five teams in the EPL, Liverpool , Arsenal, Manchester City, Manchester United and Chelsea, on the outcomes of matches among them. Following the loss of the Community Shield to Crystal Palace, majority of Liverpool’s rivals may have concluded that Bournemouth could shock them in the league opener last Friday.

Their belief could have been stronger when Liverpool lost their 2-0 lead to allow the visitors level scores. But the Arne Slot army dug into their bag of experience to score two quick goals from Federico Chiesa and Egyptian talisman, Mohamed Salah to open their season with maximum points that may keep them leading the pack from the first day. The noise will not be limited to the viewing centres but will cut across the betting centres, which are growing in leaps and bounds across the country these days.

The betting centres don’t usually experience altercations seen at viewing centres caused by mockery of a club by rival fans. Theirs are plagued by sighs of disappointment and curses for players and coaches who they blame making them lose money they stake with. With the return of league matches across Europe, betting centres have become a beehive with staking fans shoving each other in order to place their bets and win some money.

On the other hand, viewing centres will be drowned with a cacaphony of voices from fans abusing players of their reverred clubs who are not meeting up or mocking players of opposing clubs.

The arguments at these viewing centres sometimes result into ugly incidents which could be as minor as fighting and tearing of each other’s clothes or as gruesome as stabbing one another.

It could be recalled how an Arsenal fan was stabbed in the eye by a rival fan at a viewing centre somewhere in the country for daring to mock a rival club.

The injured fan bore his pain and became deformed while getting only a get well message from Arsenal’s coach back then, Arsene Wenger fondly called The Professor by the club’s fans.

Another Arsenal fan simply known as Vigo was not that lucky when he was stabbed to death at a newsstand at Volks bus stop on the Badagry expressway in Lagos over argument on Arsenal’s drubbing of West Brom in 2021.

The crazy moments in some other climes could take some dangerous trends like a throwing someone from a building for distracting him from watching a game he had invested his emotions in.

In Nigeria, it sometimes leads to an argument between a man and his wife over what to watch, a football match or a movie on Netflix. Some wise, or is it desperate wives, tune their television sets to their favourite channel and put away the remote control so that their husband don’t get access to it to change to football channels at weekends.

This however, have its consequences as the men are driven out of their homes to find joy at some viewing centres where they may face unruly fans and come back with sad tales. Another reason football is described as an opium, not only for oppressed masses but for some elite in the society, is the story of late Chief Olalekan Sanusi Salami, a strong supporter of IICC Shooting Stars of Ibadan who once served as the club’s Team Manager and later Chairman in their heydays.

Because of his passion for football and love for Shooting Stars, he was said to have ignored the news of the death of one of his children during a match.

It was after the match ended that he then remembered he was being told something and asked what it was all about. That is one of the craziest moments of football.

As the 2025/2026 football season begins, one hopes the craziness will be limited to only arguments coming with different levels of noises and not arguments that could lead to permanent disability or death of any fan.