Every Fan Believes Their Club Is The Most Hated

I will admit it straight away, as a Real Madrid fan, I have felt it too. That sense that everything is tilted, that decisions go against us more than they should, that there is something bigger at play. And that is exactly where this starts. Every fanbase sees itself as the center of the story. Not just one club among many, but the club everything revolves around. If you are the protagonist, then everyone else naturally becomes either a supporting character or a villain.

That mindset creates the foundation for the persecution complex. It is not even entirely irrational. Football is emotional, tribal, built on identity. The “us vs them” idea has always been there. You hear it in chants, you see it in rivalries. What has changed is how universal it has become. A chant like “everyone hates us, we don’t care” used to belong to clubs like Millwall F.C.. Now, you could hear a version of it from almost any fanbase in the world.

For me, the key point is this, the belief that “everyone hates us” is not really about evidence. It is about usefulness. It gives fans a way to process everything. If you lose, it is not just failure, it is injustice. If you win, it is not just success, it is triumph against the odds. It turns every season into a story where you are always fighting something bigger.

What has really accelerated this mindset is not football itself, but the way we consume it. Social media does not show you reality. It shows you what will keep you engaged. And what keeps people engaged is conflict. If you follow your club, the algorithm quickly learns what triggers you. Rival fans mocking your team, controversial decisions, pundits criticizing your players. That is what gets pushed to the top of your feed. So you start to believe that is the dominant opinion.

In reality, it is often just a loud minority. Ten accounts posting aggressively can feel like an entire fanbase attacking you. And because you keep seeing it, it reinforces the idea that there is something against you. I notice it myself. I remember every negative take about Madrid. Every prediction that we would fail. But I often forget the neutral or positive ones. That is confirmation bias doing its job.

The result is that your world becomes smaller and more hostile at the same time. You are not just competing on the pitch, you feel like you are constantly defending your club’s existence in a digital space that never switches off.

If social media builds the emotion, VAR gives it evidence. Before, refereeing decisions were fleeting. You argued, you moved on. Now, every decision is replayed, zoomed, slowed down, dissected from ten angles. And the strange thing is, both sides always feel wronged.

Smaller clubs believe the system protects the elite. That clubs like Real Madrid or FC Barcelona get the benefit of the doubt because of status, history, or commercial value. Big clubs believe the opposite. That referees overcompensate to avoid accusations of bias, leading to harsher decisions against them. Both cannot be true at the same time, but both feel real.

The truth is simpler. There are too many variables, too many officials, too many matches for a coordinated conspiracy to exist across a season. What VAR has done is not expose bias, but expose margins. Millimeters, slight contacts, subjective interpretations. But once you already believe something, those margins become proof. Every frame can be used to confirm what you already think.

The media plays its role too, even if it is not always intentional. Football is now a 24-hour conversation. There has to be a story every week. And the easiest story to sell is crisis. One week it is Tottenham Hotspur F.C. collapsing. The next it is Chelsea F.C. in disarray. Then it shifts to FC Barcelona or Real Madrid depending on results. No club is immune. The narrative just rotates.

Pundits add another layer. Former players often go out of their way to sound critical about their old clubs, to prove they are unbiased. But fans do not see neutrality, they see betrayal. Once a narrative is set, it becomes difficult to escape. If your team is labelled “soft,” every mistake reinforces it. If your manager is “finished,” every loss becomes confirmation. From the outside, it looks like analysis. From the inside, it feels like targeting.

Not all “hate” is imagined. But it is often misunderstood. Take clubs like Manchester City, PSG or Newcastle United F.C(although to not as much a pronounced level, YET) . The criticism they receive is tied to ownership and structure. It is not really about the football, but about what their success represents.

Then you have legacy giants like Real Madrid, Barcelona, Manchester United, or Juventus. The “hate” here is different. It is built on history. Dominance, success, and, in some cases, controversy like Calciopoli. People enjoy seeing these clubs struggle. It is not always personal, it is often just schadenfreude.

Then there are smaller clubs, who feel ignored or disadvantaged. They see decisions go against them and interpret it as the system protecting bigger names. In every case, the feeling is similar, “they are against us.” But the reasons are completely different. This is where it becomes clear that the phenomenon is universal.

Up until this season(where it sorta looks like the opposite now even), At Arsenal, there was a belief that referees and media narratives were trying to derail their title push. From the outside, a decent(EMPHASIS ON DECENT) number actually admire their progress.

At Real Madrid, there is a long-standing sense that decisions in Spain are influenced by politics or institutional bias, especially in relation to FC Barcelona. On the other side, Barcelona fans believe the exact opposite.

At Manchester City, the narrative is that the charges against them are an attempt to erase their success. For others, it is about accountability.

And then you have a newly promoted side, convinced they do not get penalties because they are “too small.” In reality, they are often just defending more and attacking less. Different clubs, different contexts, same conclusion. Everyone thinks the story is about them.

Where I end up on this is simple. The persecution complex is not really about injustice. It is about relevance. If people are talking about your club, arguing about your matches, debating your decisions, it means you matter. It means you are part of the conversation. The only thing worse than being “hated” is being ignored completely.

Most of what we call hate is not even serious. It is banter, rivalry, exaggeration. A shared language that fans use to compete beyond the pitch. And I include myself in this. I have felt the frustration, the suspicion, the sense that things are not fair. But when I step back, it becomes clear that every fanbase feels the same way. Which probably means none of us are as uniquely targeted as we think. If anything, it is a strange kind of compliment.

If the whole world feels like it is against your club, it usually means your club is still important enough to argue about.