Football Fandom

This is what comes of trying to talk to colleague about Yahoo! usership and type fascinating ILE qn at once.

I'd say you can be a football fan without one definte allegiance, but for myself to get into a match I have to throw myself very strongly behind supporting one team over the other. I usually achieve this by thinking "Who do Man. United hate the most" and then support them.

I don't get all this about supporting the team you live closest to - you support the team that means the most to you. My parents both came from Manchester, and my Dad lived just down the road and went to most home games. The first time he took me to Old Trafford was just breathtaking, and it still leaves me agape every time I go up (not v often, I have to admit).

Case in point? Wimbledon. Their current fans have a choice, it seems. Stay loyal to Wimbledon and eschew the theory that it's location, location, location. Or, follow some other team like Crystal Palace. After all, they've been sharing their stadium for long enough.

Anyway, yes you can be a footy fan without an allegiance, although I'd like to see how long you last before developing feelings one way or another for most teams. I liked Dundee Utd because of their orange strip.

If you consciously decide to become a football fan, you're not really a fan until it suddenly strikes you that you love the game and that happens totally unconsciously, innit?

The best thing about supporting a team is the Saturday afternoon, dipping in and out of football results (if you are not - like I rarely was - at the game). Though games themselves were trememndous events offering a degree of (possibly in my case) false community. It was football that allowed me into pubs when I was short and sixteen.

Come On You Reds.

I remember seeing Woking play Boreham Wood in the Isthman league as a wee nipper. We hate you woking we do, et al.

'Do you like football? Do you like discussing football? Do you visit pubs to watch football on a big floppy screen? Do you sit in train carriages reading the Sun sports section, looking for all the world like a bloated, flabby-armed pig who's somehow learned to read? Have you ever stopped to think about what a thick cunt you're being? You really are, you know: you're a big thick cunt. A big, thick, boring fucking cunt. Here's an idea: next time you're tempted to start another boring fucking conversation about boring fucking football, why don't you poke one of your eyes out with your thumb instead? And then really scrape around the back of the socket with your thumbnail? With any luck it'll shock your thick cunt boring fucking football-liking fucking friends into discussing something more pressing than football for once... they could talk about calling an ambulance, say, or maybe just hold an impromptu debate about whether the eye you just pushed out of your head was still able to send visual signals to your brain as it oozed down your cheek. Or maybe they'll stand around grunting about football, as usual. The Kilroy team would like to speak to you: call now on 090 9870980.'

Are Woking in the conference, consider BW are in the Doc Martens...

It's just occurred to me that my sarcasm detector was switched off when I read that so I didn't give the right response. Here's what I meant to say: you bastard.

Spur of the moment thing, obviously...

Often, I (+ to some extent my brother) would time our visits home to coincide with a home game, and often therefore Dad would accompany us. Slowly, he became more and more involved and now he's a full on rabid fan who rarely misses a home game and even goes to aways if they're reasonably near.

So even though you are very, very old, Tom, you probably still have a chance of developing a fondness for a team. If you want to (that's the bit I'm not sure about).

As for why the Gills -- I first became aware of the game in general thanks to a really cool documentary flick about Spain 82. Only an hour, of course, so all the good bits ran one after another rather than being stretched out over time, but still. Living in San Diego helped too, since America's bizarro indoor soccer league in the eighties *did* in fact produce a dominant team, namely the S.D. Sockers. So yowsa. But I never really had a team until a couple of years back when the Gills did that FA Cup run and ended up facing Chelsea in the quarterfinals -- I thought 'that's my kind of team' and have merrily followed their travails since. :-)

Charlton? Glory boy.

"I started watching Fulham because they are playing in the Premiership, and because they've got quite good, and I could get tickets." Revel in being a glory boy, that would be admirably contrary. I wish I could.

West London rules! Technically I should support Brentford or QPR coz they are my local teams.

http://thecure.com/robe rtpages/qpr.html

In which one R. Smith talks of his love for them and how he's sick of modern football culture, not to mention his horror over last season's relegation.

It's perfectly fine to be into football without supporting a team - one of the most knowledgeable people I know doesn't support a team because he comes from a rugby background and wasn't interested in football from day one. Now he knows a little bit about a lot of teams and in a way it's a better situation to be in because he's got a more general knowledge.

I irrationally loathe West Ham United - effectively the National Front's own team in the 70s, and still supported by an alarming number of Romford council house dwellers and "tough" Staffordshire bull terrier owners who think the actual East End has been turned into a foreign land and, well, that Andrew Rosindell's telling it like it is, isn't he? (this is absurdly prejudiced but, for me Rosindell, Bob Spink and all the other East London / Essex Tories are to West Ham what Franco was to Real Madrid). My other irrational hatred is Oldham Athletic: pump Gracie Fields up to volume 10 to celebrate escaping relegation and almost destroy my radio in the process: yeah, that'll make "our Asian population" feel at home, won't it? In that moment was the ethnic regionalism of Oldham's local establishment defined: boast that "French ponce" Cantona won't be able to cope with the "freezing winds" in the derby against MUFC and dream that it is forever 1934. I still hate hate HATE any team managed by Joe Royle (and, indeed, Manchester City generally).

Football: classic. Attitude and worldview of England national team most of the time pre-Eriksson: unbelievably dud. Japan during next year's World Cup: Momus makes mental note to avoid for entire month- and-a-bit ...

But it's not the same as going to a match you really *care* about. I couldn't care less who won, to be honest, and that was the main reason why we left 10 mins early, and got up 5 mins before the half time whistle to get a (very rough) pint and pastie. I don't think you'll appreciate the nervous tension of a match until you take sides.

I've rationally detested Crystal Palace ever since that whole "team of the Eighties" line.

Incidentally, football grounds at / near the top of blinkin' great big hills = DUD.

Ex-Crystal Palace chairman coming along and playing with your club a bit before getting bored and throwing them back in the toy box = a bit dud.

To answer the question, you can definitely be a football fan without specific team allegiance. Then you truly can watch a game that is "good for the neutrals". Which is nice... Also people's love for their team can be a lot greater than for the game itself and vice versa. I love football but I know as much as I love Brentford, I'm not in the same league as Timmy travelling to see Exeter or someone else who cries during games when he comes round your house to watch Liverpool.... Oh and I support Brentford because they were my local team. End of story. I just wasn't blessed with great geography. I did try watching the top flight teams on the alternate Saturdays when I was younger as I wanted to see the star players of the day, such as trying to like Chelsea as most of my friends did. But when I saw Watford beat them 5-1 I was in hysterics... Back to Griffin Park I went...

I really don't know why my mother's family chose to support Palace: they just *did* - it's all lost in time now. However by the time my mother was growing up they'd moved south to Sydenham, which might have strengthened it (and moved them further away from Millwall, of course).

Next time... flush over Fulham.

The problem with Griffin Park is an expansion planning permission problem. That is, the people who buy a house next to a football ground won't let the football ground get any bigger. Therefore, one end can not even be turned into a proper stand and is open to the elements. Tossers... Go and move next to a crown bowls green if you don't want to see stands from your window... The Woking thing was to be a temporary thing before a new stand and was probably more a threat / bargaining tool with Hounslow council which won't give planning permission for a new ground or to move anywhere else within the Borough.

As for the free admission to the Peterborough game it's in a bid to get our crowds up to 10,000. Which I find very amusing... Apparently watching a free Brentford game will make you come back for more and more every week. Rightio...

Putting it simply it's a bleedin' mess. But at least we're not selling our best players for a packet of fags and a Walnut Whip at the moment.

Thread Revival:

Can one 'consciously decide' to be a fan of anything? Like different music I guess you feel attracted to something or you don't. My Grandfather (Mother's side) was a huge football fan without apparently having a specific team allegiance. He grew up watching his local side Brentford, before watching Colchester when he moved there. Later he became a regular at Home Park following the fortunes (or lack of them) of Plymouth Argyle. I don't know much about him, he died when I was a baby, but my Gran still reminisces over the size of his grin in the summer of 1966.

I was football mad as a kid, still am. Though raised in West Yorkshire my Geordie father took me to see his beloved Newcastle United as a 7 year old and I was hooked for life. It was the most fabulous experience, the stadium, the atmosphere, the passion, the excitement I'd never seen so many people. Needless to say Newcastle lost. Newcastle became my club. That said I love football first and Newcastle second, carrying a season ticket for a local Dutch club cos I need my football fix.

Do you still feel the same about football as what you used to? Do you still feel the same connection?

When do you think the golden age of football was?

golden age was '98-'03 AFAIC. I feel an even stronger connection to my team, if not the game as a whole, which is growing more and more ludicrous by the television contract.

89-92 - violence was almost done, but we still had terraces so you could turn up at pretty much any ground in London and pay less then a tenner to get in on the day, if you were early enough (or bunk in at half time if you were skint).

The football was shit mind.

Its easy to think of modern football as corrupted and soulless, a giant money laundering exercise, ordinary people priced out of the game, fans happy to accept whichever ex foreign dictator is going to come in next, the gradual running down of lower league clubs (not that they were ever run well)

But throughout most of the 70s and 80s football was plagued with hooliganism

Looking at attendances across the league..and clubs being part of their communities...perhaps in difficult times but with optimism (if we believe that football is/was a mirror of society)..is there a case for the late 40s-mid 50s?

As a devoted fan of Vålerenga I cannot listen to anything that carries the name of rival football team Lillestrøm. They should be ashamed of themselves ;)

― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Saturday, 5 March 2005 00:52 (fifteen years ago) link

At the beginning of the 1960s, a new generation of local players broke into Vålerengen's first squad. Players like Einar Bruno Larsen, Terje Hellerud and Leif Eriksen became core personalities of a group of players which eventually became known as Bohemene (The Bohemians). The club would become known for its brilliant style of football as the number of people in the audience increased. The players became popular for their charismatic, witty comments and light hearted humour. Vålerengen secured a third place in 1961.

truly a Bohemian Rhapsody avant la lettre

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpoaVD6KOvI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5smJL9LvNmo

And for anyone who prefers Freddy alone without Morten Gamst Pedersen and the others

MGP is still playing at 39!