Is supporting Lazio, instead of Inter Milan, Man U, or Real Madrid perhaps a pathology? I mean other clubs have a bigger budget, and not then surprisingly, a bigger fan base. Maybe I have a big personality problem. Here in Los Angeles, in the center of the world in some ways, I hunger for provincial martyrdom.

It would be easier, it can be argued, to root for a powerful rich club, like Manchester United or Inter Milan, or at least FC Barcelona. That way, you'd get to see them more on TV as they are shown more often than not. So, the funny thing is that I, as an immigrant in the USA, identify with a team from Italy.

No, I cannot feel the intensity of the ancient provincial rivalries, the local hatred of A.S. Roma (I even sometimes, somewhat like Roma!). But, perhaps because it took me so long for me to settle in America, as an "American", it seems outrageous for me to cheer the privileged unto whom everything has been given, the men with "Pirelli" or "AIG" on their shirts.

Perhaps the kind of emotions I relish in football have to do with the pathos that you did not choose which team to support, in the way you cannot choose the personality of your children, and yet you must go on supporting them even when they play awfully. No doubt, there is a sickness in my being attracted to this passion. So, why S.S. Lazio? Do I actually want to feel that the team I support can only win rarely, that victories will always be snatched from the teeth of fate, and that losses will be the order of the day, this so as to give a monumental importance to the occasional success?

Growing up in America as an Iranian immigrant, going to graduate school with people generally from a far wealthier more privileged background, I cannot deny having felt a little excluded: linguistically, economically, culturally. And now, without family money, or a steady good job, or a book published, I feel insecure and more than a little frustrated. No doubt the failing is more mine than it is theirs.

But with Lazio it is different. It is not that the people of Rome or even the curva are like me. Our backgrounds are a thousand miles and many light-years apart.  With just 2% of Italians supporting Lazio, maybe it's just that--if only because Lazio, I Biancocelesti, or the white and sky blues can never really be a big team, this is necessarily a population of underdogs. And there was a moment when I linked my own battles to theirs, my own experience of it anyway, as I saw it, shoveling shit to Lazio's endless fight against the flood-tide of big money. In a weird sense, I could feel part of their community, even through the TV and a thousand miles away.

Occasional fans of football I find, on the hand, are typically fitful fans of wealthy teams--lavishly talented but grossly bloated. These people I tend to associate with all the well-fed obtusity I imagine I am up against from time to time. They only have eyes for the prettiest of supermodels, only like very expensive cars and always watch or read whatever Oprah tells them to. Now, I'm perfectly aware that my divisions are entirely unverifiable and almost certainly false. In all probability the people I have liked or disliked in life are equally divided between the two sides; or more likely they don't give a shit about football. They find it boring and ridiculous. But precisely they mystery of following a team is the emotion where there really is no reason to invest. Games against Inter are the high points for me. And now, currently rooted in mid-table Serie A, mere financial survival and a return to European football is all I could ask for, with the Aquilotti.

No we probably won't win, and the referee will as usual, favor the big Northern teams. In fact, the more I think about football, the more I am convinced that injustice is an essential and important part of it. The fan thirsts for injustice. The Lazio fan, the Laziale, or indeed the fan of any small team, is lucky. He gets it.