The phrase “mpira itaniulia marafiki” (football will kill my friends) could not be further from the truth. If history is anything to go by, there are documented, tragic cases of football fans in Kenya taking their own lives after their team lost, making the saying a disturbing reality for the victims’ families and friends.

In a heartbreaking incident in 2009, Suleiman Alphonse Omondi, a 29-year-old Arsenal fan, took his life by hanging. He was found in his house in Embakasi, Nairobi.

Omondi was found hanged at his home in a middle-class Nairobi estate shortly after leaving distraught from a local drinking joint where he had watched Arsenal lose 3-1 in their Champions League semi-final against Manchester United at the Emirates Stadium.

“We were watching the match at Bamba 70 pub, and when Arsenal was defeated, Suleiman just walked out in protest, and he was crying,” said Calvince Otieno, one of Omondi’s friends at the time.

“We didn’t know he was going to hang himself until this morning, when we received the reports and came here to find his body at the balcony.”

Four years later, in 2013, another Kenyan fan, 28-year-old John Macharia, unable to cope with Manchester United’s loss to Newcastle United, committed suicide over the weekend.

Macharia plunged to his death from a multi-story apartment block in the capital, Nairobi. This followed United’s 1-0 defeat, their second home loss in the league that season.

“Macharia jumped from the seventh floor of an apartment at Pipeline Estate after realizing that his team, Manchester United, lost 1-0 to Newcastle at Old Trafford and committed suicide,” said Nairobi’s County Police Commander at the time, Benson Kibui.

These local tragedies have shown how intense the emotional and even physical toll that football takes on deeply invested fans.

Studies have shown that during high-profile matches, such as finals or derbies, football fans experience dangerously high levels of physical stress.

Fans around the world know the strong emotions brought on by watching their teams on match day, but particularly zealous supporters are more at risk of experiencing dangerous levels of the ‘fight or flight’ hormone cortisol, commonly associated with stress.

Researchers at the University of Oxford have verified a scientific link between fans’ intense group bonding with their team and their cortisol levels while they watch football.

‘Fans who are strongly fused with their team, that is, have a strong sense of being “one” with their team, experience the greatest physiological stress response when watching a match,’ says Dr. Martha Newson, a researcher at the Centre for the Study of Social Cohesion, University of Oxford.

‘Fans who are more casual supporters also experience stress, but not so extremely.’ The study was published in the journal Stress and Health.

The study was conducted with Brazilian spectators during the 2014 World Cup, hosted in Brazil. The fans’ saliva was collected before, during, and after matches, including Brazil’s historic 7–1 semi-final loss to Germany.

‘Cortisol rocketed during live games for the fans who were highly fused to the team,’ Newson explains. ‘It was particularly high during games where their team lost.’

The research also uncovered that the stress response was not gender-specific. ‘Interestingly, there were no differences in cortisol concentrations between men and women.

Despite preconceptions that men tend to be more bonded to their football teams, women were in fact found to be slightly more bonded to their national team than the men.’

‘This study has shown how people who are highly bonded to their football teams (and likely any other group identity) have unique psycho-physiological profiles.’ Newson concluded.

This stress surge, she says, helps explain the passionate, sometimes extreme reactions of football fans, from ritualized chanting and singing to even violence.

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