Who do you support? And how deep does that allegiance run?

My English Premier League football team is Chelsea. I fell in love with them when I watched the 2009 Champions League semi-final at the old Bohemian in Auckland Park. Chelsea lost out to Barcelona due to some outrageous officiating, and I was sold!

The passion I found bubbling up inside myself as the referee waved off four consecutive Chelsea penalty appeals made me realise I actually cared about the outcome. After a few years of drifting, I had finally found my team! And so it has been ever since.

So that’s me. Chelsea fan for more than a decade. Then there’s my brother-in-law Simon.

Simon is English, and originates from a small town named Oakham, in the East Midlands, about 40km from the city of Leicester. He is thus a Leicester fan, but a fan on a far deeper, more visceral level than I could ever hope to be.

His parents, his uncles, his kids, his cousins, his grandparents, step-relatives… everyone of them is a Leicester fan. And they have been for generations. Leicester is in his blood like DNA. Chelsea is in mine like a seasonal flu vaccination!

Leicester are now relatively well established in the Premier League, but it was not ever thus. I remember braaiing at Simon’s house in the early 2000s, and watching him log on to internet radio so he could listen to that weekend’s match, because Leicester were in League 1 that time – two levels down – and that was the only way to catch the game.

Fast forward seven years, and Leicester were back in the Premier League. They barely survived relegation, then the following year, proceeded to win the entire 2015/16 Premiership for the first in their 132-year history! An unfancied team from England’s 11th largest city!

Leicester have been through a lot, even achieving an unimaginable, fairytale league win, and Simon – and his ancestors – have walked that road with them. I, by contrast, support Chelsea because I got a bit upset in a bar a few years ago.

My contrarian motivation pales somewhat beside the tribal, generational affiliation Simon has with his club.

So it was with almost half-hearted gusto that I once again settled onto Simon’s couch to watch our two respective clubs – Chelsea and Leicester – do battle for the FA Cup, England’s greatest knockout football tournament.

My club, a heinously overfunded team of millionaires, had won the Cup eight times. Simon’s guys had made the final four times, but never won it.

Simon’s entire house was festooned with the regalia of the Leicester Foxes for the match. Every member of the family had on a Leicester shirt. Eyes were peeled to maybe catch site of his relatives in the crown on TV. His daughter Molly baked a Leicester FC cake, for god’s sake

When my team eventually succumbed to Simon’s club, courtesy of one screamer of a goal by Youri Tielemans late in the second half, the ecstatic, teary-eyed passion could be felt from Linksfield to Oakham and back.

I made a show of being a bit disappointed, but if I’m honest, I was happy for them. Leicester now have an FA Cup win to go with their 2015/16 premiership, cementing the legendary status of their unfancied team of battlers who have risen from League 1 ignominy to global glory.

It would be churlish to be grumpy about that!

My daughter and I pretended to be congratulating our relatives in a sporting manner, when we were actually glowing inside, we were so happy for them!

It made me realise that all allegiances are not created equal. In sport, in business, in politics. In life!

Hagen Engler.