"There is a model — the five stages of accepting something unpleasant. It was invented for big things. But any supporter will tell you it perfectly describes the evening after a home defeat."
Stage one. Denial
The final whistle. The score on the board is one Sergei sees but his brain doesn't yet register. This is a defence mechanism of the psyche. This is evolution. This is what allows us to go on living.
Sergei looks at the pitch. The players head for the dressing room. Sergei doesn't head anywhere. Sergei stands and waits — for what exactly, he can't explain. A recount of the goals, perhaps. Perhaps for the referee to come back out and say: "You know, I got something wrong right at the start, we're replaying it."
"Is that it?" asks the man in the next seat.
"Nah," replies Sergei. "VAR's still looking at it."
VAR isn't looking at anything. VAR went home long ago.
At home Sergei opens Sports.ru and reads the match centre. Not because he doesn't know the score. But because the match centre is written neutrally, with protocol coldness, without intonation — and for some reason that's easier to bear than a live human voice that will tell the truth. The match centre doesn't judge. The match centre simply records.
Score confirmed. The match centre wouldn't lie.
Stage two. Anger
Sets in roughly forty minutes after the final whistle. Sometimes sooner — if the radio's on in the car and they're already discussing it.
Sergei is angry at everything at once and nothing in particular. At the coach — for that substitution in the sixtieth minute that decided everything, even though formally it decided nothing, but Sergei knows for certain that's exactly when something invisible broke. At the centre-back — for the goal, even though the goal came from the other defender, from badly worked corners in the second half, because the pressing wasn't working from the very start.
In the supporters' chat something takes place that's called collective catharsis and looks like a court hearing in which everyone is a prosecutor, nobody is counsel for the defence, and the accused is simultaneously the coach, the goalkeeper, the club's management, Russian football as a phenomenon and Sergei personally, who "jinxed it" when he wrote in the chat "well, we'll stick five past them today" 45 minutes before kick-off.
That's true, by the way. He wrote it. He doesn't deny it.
Stage three. Bargaining
The strangest stage. Sets in late at night, when the anger has burnt out and acceptance hasn't yet arrived.
Sergei lies in the dark and bargains. Not with anyone in particular. He just — bargains.
If that penalty had been given — it would have been 1:1. At 1:1 they'd have pushed on and finished it. They know how to finish it at 1:1, Sergei knows that for a fact, he saw them do it in October. So it would have been a draw. And a draw isn't a defeat. It's a point. A point changes the table.
Sergei opens his phone and looks at the table — hypothetically, with the imaginary point. Closes it. The point is imaginary. The table isn't.
He stares at the ceiling.
"Go to sleep," says his wife from the darkness.
"I am asleep," says Sergei.
He isn't asleep. He's bargaining with physics. The penalty was two centimetres away. Two centimetres is nothing. It's the width of a finger. It's the boundary between parallel universes, in one of which Baltika picked up a point, and in the other Sergei lies staring at the ceiling.
Stage four. Depression
In the morning Sergei gets up and makes coffee. The coffee is ordinary. The morning is ordinary. The defeat hasn't gone anywhere.
There's nothing dramatic about depression — which is exactly why it's the worst. Anger, at least, can be felt. Bargaining, at least, occupies the head. But depression is just greyness. The coffee gets drunk, the bus goes, at work everything's as usual, only somewhere in the background — the defeat. Like a faint sound you can't work out the source of, but it's there.
Sergei rings a friend.
The friend is Vitya. Vitya has supported Baltika since ninety-eight and over that time has developed a specific immunity: he doesn't get angry after defeats, doesn't bargain, doesn't construct parallel universes. Vitya simply waits for the next match. It's either enlightenment or something clinical — Sergei has never quite decided.
"Oh well," says Vitya.
"What do you mean, oh well," says Sergei. "We brought on Offor in the 60th minute for some reason. He can't hold the ball up!"
"Well, the coach knows best."
"The coach knows best?" Sergei repeats, and there are so many intonations in that question at once that Vitya is silent for a while.
"Well," says Vitya at last. "Next game's already on Saturday."
Sergei hangs up. Vitya is a good man. But he didn't help one bit.
Stage five. Acceptance
Comes unexpectedly. As a rule — not from realisation but from exhaustion.
In the evening Sergei opens the fixture list. Next game — Saturday. At home. Rostec Arena, sector C, row 14, seat 23. Sergei looks at this for a few seconds.
Then he closes the fixture list and opens it again.
Then he writes in the supporters' chat: "Who's going on Saturday?"
Six people reply. One is that old man from the third row who comments on matches with the words "so what", "oh well" and "it'll be a draw anyway". He's going too. He always goes.
Acceptance isn't when it stops hurting. Acceptance is when you pick up your scarf and go again. Knowing it might hurt again. You go anyway.
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, who formulated these stages, was right. It's just that she worked with finite things.
Baltika is infinite.
