itt you explain why you support club x (are "support" and "club" are the right terms? i have no idea)

so i'm sorta curious as to why soccer fans root for the teams they root for. in the US it's pretty much broken down by which city you grew up in, or which state or region of the country if your city doesn't have a team in a specific sport, so i assume that's mostly what it's like in europe. but some people eschew hometown teams and pick up allegiances from their parents or because they fell in love with some now-retired player when they were a kid or they're a savage front runner who roots for the yankees or the cowboys because they were really dominant for five years or so

so, an informal survey, altho it might turn out to be more boring than i realize

A few answers on here:

Support Your Local Team (or don't, whatever)

ah thx

didn't come up in "related threads" for whatever reason

i started following spurs when a dutch coach i'd always admired and taken an interest in took them over in the mid 00's.

― Amateur Darraghmatics (darraghmac), Monday, August 24, 2009 11:09 PM (1 year ago)

Lived in Paris and basically all my friends were either for Paris Saint Germain or Marseille. I was 5 when Marseille reached the Champions League final, 7 when they won it and that partic evening is probably the first football match I remember and the one that made me tip in favor of Marseille. Also I was a contrarian bastard and I've never liked any club linked to Paris in any sport. Then I lived abroad, could not follow football (and well Marseille had been relegated for um cheating so I missed that). When I came back to France, still supported Marseille but started liking Lyon too as I really liked their striker, Sonny Anderson. That made me follow them a bit. Then, they started being the only decent French club in the Champions League. And i ended up studying in Lyon so yeah all those factors mean I support them too.

from the other thread:

I started secondary school (all boys, private, central London) in 1994, and I wasn't doing a very good job of making friends or having anything to talk to people about, cos all the other kids were talking about football more or less all the time, so I decided I'd develop an interest in it too. However, I didn't feel like fitting in that much, so given that all of them supported Man U, Spurs, Liverpool, Arsenal or Chelsea, those five were written off from the start.

― William Bloody Swygart, Tuesday, 25 August 2009 02:53 (1 year ago)

same goes for me, basically. chose qpr cos we were living slap bang in rangers territory, they were the underdog top london club at the time, i loved the kit, and for some reason i really loved the name (and still do).

due to me being foreign/an only child/having no guys around it wasn't until april 1996 that i got to go to my first game (with some random friend of the family doing my mum a favour). we'd been crap all season after losing sir les but come the closing stages of the season and with the drop looming we were starting to put some spirited results together. qpr beat west ham 3-0 that day (ready, gallen 2). but the only thing i remember is laughing and jeering at the away end as they started chanting "3-0 and you're going down" towards the very end of the game. sour grapes, i thought. since the guy that had taken me to the match wasn't really into football and insisted we leave bang on the whistle,it wasn't until we were in the car that i realised the hammers fans were right: a freak series of results meant everyone immediately above us had won, and so we were relegated.

tune in next week to see what happened in the next 15 years.

I'm from Liverpool. Was fascinated by this guy called Steve McManaman during Euro 96. Turned out he played for Liverpool. My dad supported Liverpool. That's it really.

support arsenal because when i was a kid our next door neighbour - a printer on the pre-Wapping News of the World - was a Highbury season ticket holder, and he used to occasionally give me programs and shit. (my dad was born and brought up in peckham and used to support millwall, but by the time i was growing up in the 70s that really wasn't a wonderful place to take a young boy - did get taken to charlton a few times tho'.) i was born in 66, so have v v v vague memories of arsenal doing the dbl in 71, and can even remember playground chants of 'charlie george superstar walks like a woman and wears a bra', so i'm p sure there was also a fair bit of gloryhunting to my goonerdom. first arsenal match i can distinctly remember is the 78 FA Cup Final against Ipswich, gd intro to a lifetime of heartbraek (and fuck mick mills). i went to a catholic secondary school where lots of the kids had irish parents and relatives, so arsenal during the brady et al era were prob the most popular team amongst my peers

didn't really start to go to highbury regularly until the george graham era - hullo gus ceasar - and now that i live in glasgow i'm def an armchair supporter. still haven't been to the emirates :-(

oh and have adopted morton as my scottish team cos my best friend up here is a season ticket holder, and its a gd way of sidestepping the usual olde firm bs. morton are currently bottom of their league so no gloryhuntin' this time hurrah

When I first started watching the Premier League in the late 90's, Leeds were doing relatively well and I enjoyed watching them. My family name is originally from Yorkshire (and I m a notorious white rose fanatic) so I decided to root for them and then it just took.

My grandad hated that almost everyone in the family were Spurs fans and so started an all out war (or so it seemed to me as a 5 or 6 y/o) to get me to be a Gooner instead of a Spurs fan. My cousin Thomas was practically born a month earlier than me into a lilywhite shirt, my Grandad fucking hated my uncle Steve for it, as well as my sis, brother and three other cousins - all his daughter's husband Steve's fault - and he could see the lilywhite in my eyes. He told me magical stories about seeing Arsenal win the league with the last kick of the game, of the double winning team, hell of murder mysteries.

And then he died.

So I supported Arsenal 'in his honour'. The team was a bunch of drunkards run by a corrupt bore but I didn't care. And then Nayem broke my heart and Steve carried on smugly to try and get me to change alligances. But I stuck my ground and it became almost like a battle for a fallen soldier. Even though my family moved away just before I was born and I didn't care for the derby aspect that started the war, I was passed the torch for those who were and my Arsenal was damn sure going to become the biggest there was.

Subsequently, playing on the fact that uncle Steve was so smug about Spurs's upward motion, the awkward 'foreigness' of the new 'geeky' 'professor' and the fact that I was obviously a child with no money to lose - I won quite a bit of money betting on Arsenal to do better than Spurs in the league for about five years until he gave up.

Parents, grandparents, born/bred Merseyside (yeah, yeah, Tranmere closer)...

"Head it like Tommy Lawton, son..."

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2216/2330291874_73ecdec817.jpg

Woah, amazing photo! Quick, someone set up a wdyll playing football thread

(Summer 1980, our old back yard).

your old pics are always so great, michael

the new ones, meh, not so much

Grew up in very rural USA where ice hockey was king.
Played futbol a bit through grade school but moved on by about 5th grade.
Got reacquainted during '94 WC.
Slept on '98 (so did the USA lolz).
Got hooked on USMNT in '02.
Followed MLS when I could but coverage was (and is still) lacking beyond the internets, vaguely followed German and English teams off and on.
Moved to Chicago in '04 and started going to Fire matches.
Started hanging w/ supporter groups in '06, elected to board of directors in '10, lost my mind shortly thereafter.

the new ones, meh, not so much

:)

Note the deployment of tennis wristband as Captain's armband. As if. Captain and Tennille more like. Sorry, that doesn't make any sense.

So, I'm an American and my only exposure to English football is playing Pro Evolution 3 on PS2 and the rare time I can drag myself out of bed on a saturday to watch a game in a bar. But I am endlessly fascinated by the sport in general, and the English variety in particular. I'm constantly confused by all the nicknames for teams and references to stadia and all the complicated scheduling of the different cups. If you have links to things where I could find out that it would be nice. But what I am really interested in is the breakdown of fans for the different London clubs. Based on the video game, I am a fan of Fulham, but I'm not sure what that says about me. Are there general profiles for the different clubs' fans based on age/class/race/personality/behaviour?

(Mitchell), Thursday, February 5, 2004 5:04 PM (6 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this is me 6 years ago. about 2 years or so after this i completely abandonded fulham and started half-heartedly supporting spurs mainly cause of the berbatov/keane strike partnership and edgar davids joining, who i always liked. the world cup in 2006 reinforced my interest in the sport, and i began watching more matches. the 2007/08 season was the first that i really followed closely and when i started going to a pub filled with spurs supporters to watch.

Note the deployment of tennis wristband as Captain's armband

hadn't noticed, but now that i have your arms are crazy thin!

started half-heartedly supporting spurs mainly cause of the berbatov/keane strike partnership and edgar davids joining,

had a cousin used to come over for summer hols from laaahndaaahn mate safe, and he was dulwich boy spurs follower. had been mulling over villa for a few months cos of mcgrath, staunton but Klinsmann signing and watching the first few games of the 94 season with me cuz kind of tipped me towards the lilywhites

I was a wiry, touchline-hugging winger, Darragh. I'd ghost in and out of the match - occasionally you'd see me half-heartedly offer to take a throw-in, other times I wouldn't appear to be within the playing area at all. Win, lose or draw, if I could avoid getting the ball booted in my face, I'd have given it 110%, Brian.

i was a playground whizkid but never made it out onto an 11-a-side pitch until i was 16, what a disaster for achill rovers u-16's that was.

Started hanging w/ supporter groups in '06, elected to board of directors in '10, lost my mind shortly thereafter.

Ooooh, this sounds intresting. What do you do on a bod of a supporter group? Should there be a thread for this? Or should I actually read the mls one?

Without getting too bogged down in semantics I am Director of Communications for the Secti0n 8 Chicag0 |ndependent Supp0rters' Ass0ciati0n. I write web articles and email newsletters detailing our activities, work with the team on promoting things that are in both our interests (working on Supporters' Player of the Year at the moment, for example), and also take part in board votes on various expenses (we are a registered not-for-profit). There's a bunch of non-job-specific shit too, like making banners and getting drunk with team officials.

that's great!

Without getting too bogged down in semantics

What I mean by this is S8C is not in itself a supporter group, but the umbrella organization that works with groups to get "big picture" things done wrt dealing with the team, stadium, etc. There are about a dozen or so groups iirc.

i saw the old NASL Sounders at a very young age (indoor! on turf!). i'm not sure the impression it made on me, but i still remember. then NASL folded and i fell in love with baseball. *25 years pass* went to j-league games when i lived in japan '02-'04, got into the WC in '06, went to the occasional Sounders USL game after that. they moved up to MLS and i followed along. i've had my ups and downs with them since, buy they are my team, i don't have any others.