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What club(s) do you support?
Brian Clough:
I realized that no one has ever posted this topic with an open-ended question. Always it hass been a poll with just a few choices (the biggest clubs of course) or limited to a single league (EPL)...so let us know who you support!
...and please, don't tell us you are a life-long Man City, Chelsea, or PSG fan...even if you have ::) nobody will believe you :P
Sadly, there are NO professional football clubs in my country :( so I have had to look elsewhere for inspiration. I think I have a favorite club in most nations, but I mainly support 3 clubs:
1) Swansea City AFC...I became a member of the SC supporter's trust 15 years ago and will support the swans forever! ? Monk ? Siggy ? Wiliams ? and a special cheers to Roberto Martinez..the man who started it all!
2) Celtic FC...my Bhoys!!! Mon the hoops!
3) FC St. Pauli...how can you not love the boys in brown? There's just something special about them...
Roostophe:
There's three clubs for me. Two tiny clubs, one massive club:
Aston Villa is my lifelong team. My entire family supports them. I live a few miles from Villa Park.
One of my fondest memories is watching the Villa win the League Cup in 1996.
Greenock Morton in the Scottish First Division. My second, much smaller, club. No reason other than family with this one.
Sutton Coldfield Town. Even smaller club than the second, as they're not professional. They play in England's Northern Premier League First Division South - seven divisions below the Premier League. This is my hometown club.
--- Quote from: Brian Clough on March 12, 2013, 03:52:21 AM ---Sadly, there are NO professional football clubs in my country :(
--- End quote ---
Wha-? I had you down as being from the USA. Where are you from?
Brian Clough:
--- Quote from: Roostophe on March 12, 2013, 10:21:50 PM ---Wha-? I had you down as being from the USA. Where are you from?
--- End quote ---
I am from the USA. To answer your question, we should start by asking "what is a football club?"
1) it is a legal entity
2) it is the team, players, and management
3) it is the name
4) it is the place where it plays
5) it is all the other parts -fans, employees, and other community stakeholders
Now in the USA we have the franchise system. I would argue that MLS franchises are categorically different from independent clubs. Here's why:
-Lack of legal independence. Major League Soccer is technically not an association of franchises but a single business entity, though each team has an owner-operator; the team owners are actually shareholders in the league. The league, not the individual teams, contracts with the players! MLS even followed its own playing rules until 2004, when it finally adopted FIFA rules. No.1 fail. No. 2 fail.
-No organic community. Most football clubs in Europe were formed either as works teams, or around local churches and neighborhoods. When the MLS was formed in 1993, the US had many semi-pro clubs with long histories, but instead of working with that and building organically, from the bottom up, the MLS decided build from the top down. This really hurt those clubs that had built those long histories, as many fans defected to the new MLS team. Furthermore without promotion/relegation, there is zero chance of these "organic" clubs from ever reaching the top tiers of USA football. Sir Alex Ferguson once said the end of relegation in the EPL would be suicide for lower division clubs. I think it�s fair to say the lack of relegation in MLS hurts ours. One might argue that the monopolization of entire regions actually works to build "community" but it is an artificial one. These aren't people who live within walking distance from one another or who work in the same industry. There goes no. 5.....
-No local derbies Similar in some respects to the above reason, but I can't emphasize the importance of local derbies to the cultural life of a football club. By your selections, I take it you are a Brummie. A fair comparison to the MLS would be if FC Birmingham City were the only pro team in your area (sorry, Aston Villa were too late and were never created lol), and the nearest competitors were two teams, one in London and the other in Newcastle. This is comparable to the distances between NY Red Bull Arena and those of the Philadelphia Union and New England Revolution, their nearest competitors. For me it's far worse, the nearest pro team with more than 1 year of history is probably DC United, who play their home matches 700 miles from where I live. In fact, I think the nearest such team to me might in fact be located in Havana, Cuba a mere 600 miles away. Aside from one or two oddities, the only local rivalries in North America are among college and university sports teams. Sadly even that eludes me here in Georgia. Where I live there is a 92,000 capacity stadium for the University handegg (erm, American football) team. Yet the University of Georgia does not have a mens football (erm soccer) team. The nearest men's college team is almost 2 hours from me (Georgia Tech). The nearest team it plays on a regular basis is 125 miles away.
-No security. At any moment, the "decision makers" can decide to uproot a team from its locale. This is an issue currently facing DC United despite their modest fan base and history. If anything close to what happened to FC Rangers last year happened to a MLS franchise, it wouldn't rebuild, it would just relocate, probably changing its name in the process. There goes nos. 3 and 4. Furthermore, as we have seen in the WPS (Womens Professional Soccer) league, mismanagement of one team in a franchise system can literally cause the destruction of the entire league!
What really matters to me when it comes to putting my support behind a team are these things I listed above. If one's definition of a 'football club' and sense of belonging to it is so weak and flimsy as to put up with changes of location, name, company, fans and anything else that actually does define a 'football club', then said person never was a 'fan' in the first place, they were just a customer for whatever was easiest to follow at any particular point.
My mother was born in Wales and my Father in Scotland and these days I really feel I have more in common with my comrades in Swansea, Glasgow and Hamburg than I do here. At this point I find myself living just to make money to take trips to Europe. I hope to be making the move permanently within the next few years. Maybe one day we can have a pint after an upcoming Swansea-Villa match...that is if we're both in the same league by then....
:P
The Korean Football Club:
Brian, you posted an elaborated article. Though it is difficult to understand by me----a poor English speakers, it is very good. It seems that you are a real soccer fan. Lol! I am a customer, but support club: Arsenal, coach:Ars�ne Wenger?Jos� Mario dos Santos Mourinho Felix :P
Brian Clough:
--- Quote from: Arsenal(China) on March 13, 2013, 09:22:37 AM ---Brian, you posted an elaborated article. Though it is difficult to understand by me----a poor English speakers, it is very good. It seems that you are a real soccer fan. Lol! I am a customer, but support club: Arsenal, coach:Ars�ne Wenger?Jos� Mario dos Santos Mourinho Felix :P
--- End quote ---
I don't think we should try to distinguish so much between "real" and "not real" fans, but between real clubs and franchises. Anyone who loves the beautiful game is a real fan!
...and you are probably less a "customer" than you say...would you still support the club if they decided to move it to another part of London and call themselves "the Jets"?
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