It’s Super Bowl weekend here in the United States and football is on my mind. I grew up in Los Angeles, a city without an NFL team. In fact I’ve never lived in a city with an NFL team. When I’m asked what team I support I run through a brief flow chart, and this year I’m backing the Pack. I’ve based my chart predominantly on geography, and the Packers come out on top because I lived in Wisconsin for three years. You could say this makes me a disingenuous fan or some kind of fake or a bandwagoner, but nobody ever has. People just shrug and nod their head. It’s not that controversial. There are legions of NFL fans around the country that haven’t been to a game, let alone seen their team’s stadium. By supporting Green Bay, I’m not making any kind of statement. Despite—or maybe because of—all that, I’m actually serious about supporting the Packers. On Super Bowl Sunday I’ll be in front of the TV, cheering for my team. I’ll even be a little upset if they lose.
My flowchart wouldn’t be as applicable if I converted it to soccer. For starters, L.A. has two Major League Soccer teams. I follow MLS, but like many American fans I also follow European soccer. It would be much more complicated to create a Los Angeleno’s or even an American’s Guide to Picking a European Soccer Team. There are some obvious geographical complications (the Atlantic Ocean), and even if I could create such a flow chart, I’m not sure it would go over well. Would Europeans get it? My friend Andy, for one, wouldn’t. To Andy, it wouldn’t be remotely funny. He’s from greater Manchester and—paging Edin Džeko—a Manchester United fan. Like any soccer fan, he appreciates a good game, but if United isn’t involved he emphatically does not care about the outcome (unless the outcome somehow affects United later, as in certain cup ties). By contrast, I enjoy picking a side just because it makes the game more interesting. It’s fun to become emotionally involved, however tenuous my connection to any given European team. Often the team I support, as with the NFL, is simply the team I know best.
In 2008 I watched the Liverpool/Chelsea Champions League matches with a different English friend, Stu. Stu is a Liverpudlian and a die-hard Liverpool supporter. To antagonize Stu, and because I knew the Chelsea players better than I did Liverpool’s, I rooted for Chelsea. Stu did not understand. He recognized that I was knowledgeable about soccer, even passionate, but he did not understand how I could just pick a team. As time passed and beer flowed Stu got angry. He argued that Chelsea’s Russian money distorted the transfer market and ultimately hurt the game. I agreed. Eventually, Stu resorted to hurling naked insults. When I challenged his allegiance to Liverpool, as I might tease a Dallas Cowboys fan that hasn’t ever been to Texas, Stu set his jaw. He told me that prior to moving the US he and his dad had gone years without missing a Liverpool home game. He told me the team “was a part of him.” When I balked at this cliché he told me about the day in 1989 when his dad and 95 other people were crushed to death at Hillsborough Stadium.
I kept quiet about Chelsea for the rest of the game.
To Andy and Stu shifting my support is sacrilegious; to me it is a way to keep things interesting. I stake no claim to Greater Manchester or Liverpool. To them, a team’s support is place-based and heritable. Support can’t be changed; it’s serious.
But what about Americans who support one team and stick with them, just like a local supporter? Stu might enjoy seeing an American wearing a Liverpool shirt just as Andy might like to have a friendly chat about Wayne Rooney, but at some level that fan—the outsider—is still a kind of fake. To Andy and Stu, allegiance to a team, whether loose or diehard, is incomprehensible without allegiance to the place, too.
In the United States, these places are scattered across such a large area that it’s no wonder we are comfortable with loose ties to our beloved clubs or “franchises.” Teams depend on these loose ties for things like jersey sales and TV revenue. The NFL, the NBA, and MLB all depend on their clubs’ ability to acquire fans from outside their “market.” As Christopher Mann pointed out on this blog last week, soccer is changing. The American sporting scene is beginning to look like a microcosm of global soccer’s new supporter framework. The clubs have already caught on; teams cultivate supporters in all corners of the globe. Consider how and where big European clubs now conduct pre-season training. Look at what American academy clubs have been persuaded to name themselves. But there is something upsetting about this to the local fan, something impersonal. I wonder if local supporters will ever accept a dedicated fan from Asia or the United States as an equal. Maybe it doesn’t matter. In a lot of cases, the local supporters are already in the minority.
In the United States, we are pretty easygoing when it comes to the reasons why we support a given team. Yes, we have diehard, local fans, but I think my flowchart would at least get a quick chuckle out of most of us. How many people will watch the Super Bowl from a place without a local NFL team? When the team doesn’t pick us, we have to pick the team. So on Sunday, whether you own a share of the Packers or you just think Aaron Rodgers is sexy, come on over to my house. We can watch the game, curse the refs, and have some beers. Then, maybe we can catch a repeat of the Chelsea game. If you really want, you can pull for Liverpool, but I’m going to root for the opposition.
Brian Blickenstaff blogs about soccer at Touch and Tactics. You can follow him on Twitter.
We also don’t have the local, lower league setup prominent in Europe. The multi-tiered relegation and promotion system allows for more teams and thus for local allegiances to teams that aren’t in the top flight but one day could be. In the US, if you’re a fan of top-level athletics, you have a limited choice.
Read More: American Notes, Globalization
by Brian Blickenstaff · February 4, 2011
When there are no local teams to support it’s understandable, as in your case, but I don’t understand the concept of supporting a team from a different city when there are local alternatives. The local team are your city, your blood, they’re you!
But, there are hardly local NFL teams here in Australia so we can support whoever we want in this case and in soccer too. I get you!
It’s a bit like wearing sporting clothing (jumpers, baseball hats) as fashion vs. as a mark of your support. When you’re out of the relevant area you can wear an Arsenal shirt, a Brazil shirt or a Red Sox hat to show how fun and worldly you are, but you have to have an actual affinity to them when you are in the area or you can’t wear the clothes, is my feeling.
I don’t quite get this “real” fan Vs. “fake” fan debate. I like many teams for a variety of reasons: Fulham, because of FM links; New England Patriots, Red Sox and Boston Celtics because i had family in the area, even though there was a ocean between us; Athletic Bilbau for political motives; Benfica because i saw them win as a young boy, and they were (sort of) local.
All in all, i like to have favourites and to invest some emotion into the game. I often get burned, as it happened this season with the Patriots that ruined my NFL Playoffs (i refuse to watch another game after their colapse against the Jets). I feel it adds to the experience.
I do not pretend to be more than a casual fan, except when it comes to Benfica (even though i don’t go to the stadium or buy the shirts or pay monthly fees), but i do feel the highs and lows of the games.
@M.G. The American rooting interest that is analagous to European soccer is College Football. I live in the South East, where college football is by far the most popular sport. Loyalty is based on where one (or one’s family) went to college, and sheer proximity to a university for those that did not attend college (or foolishly went to a school with no football).
Go Seminoles!
Mr. Staff-
I feel you on your allegiance. I grew up watching amazing things happen via Kirby Puckett’s bat and I will never wear another baseball hat outside of the Twins. I’ve seen hundreds of games in person at the Metrodome of all places to watch baseball indoors. We have a football team too so I will not be cheering for the Pack, nor can I support the Big-Ben led Steelers. We have a basketball team that sucks but I watch it regardless. We had a hockey team that moved to Dallas, I hated them and the NHL for about 2 seasons. Now, we have a new team not the same but I love watching them battle the Dallas Stars. I love watching Arsenal because I fell in love with them during the Henry years and because I can find their matches here in the States.
I support the teams that I grew-up with and live by but I don’t begrudge anyone who hasn’t lived by my beloved Twins getting behind Mauer and the boys because in some way them loving the little team from the corn-fields of Minnesota means that’s one less Yankees supporter. I’ve grown-up to loath the Yankees. Not because of geography but because they are the monsters that tried to kill baseball with money.
From that point of view I can understand why people grow-up loving the team in their area. I can understand also why my support for a economically powerful big four team would really piss off a Wolves fan.
Good read, you naturally epitomize American football (soccer) fans!
I think the issue here is what you’re calling supporting a team. Since “true” fans of a club (be it any sport) have some sort of tie to it (regardless of what it is) then they find it shocking that someone with no ties at all can pick a team to favor for no discernable reason and then seemingly change that tie in the future. My ties to arsenal are simply, they’re the most french team in england and my hometown team was in ligue 2 when i decided i needed a favorite team and good luck trying to find ligue 2 matches on tv in the states. and that hasn’t changed.
it’s one thing to say, i support X because I know them best, but then that’s the team you stick with from then on. You can’t then say “well i’m pulling for Z now in this game against Y” if you’ve picked X. Unless Z winning helps X of course.
I think you’ll find a similar argument between fans and fairweather fans here in the states and you’ll find a similar caste system between die hard fans and those who passively support a team
I think the whole geography, “you have to spend £xx a year on the team”, “you can’t change team” arguments are ok, but not the ruling argument.
The way you decide if you’re a true fan is how you feel when your team plays. If you find yourself angry when they play bad, happy when they play well, nervous before important matches etc, THEN you can call yourself a true fan. If not, then you just aren’t a real fan, regardless of how close you live to the stadium and how long time you’ve been a “fan” of the team.
Good stuff. I’m a Yank who studied in England and found Chelsea (with Ruud Gullit and John Spencer) to be my main team after getting the breakdown about the new Premiership and Relegation and “Europe” Cups, etc. The fact that I’ve supported them for 15 years give me a little bit of legitimacy when talking to the Brits at the Pub where I watch the games. I think as the game keeps expanding, with so many games now on ESPN and ESPN 2, that a knowledgable soccer supporter will be viewed as legit if they can walk the walk. Chelsea got a 3 year extension to with SAMSUNG as their shirt sponsor right in the middle of the big recession/ crisis, they even got a raise, largely due to the influence that would have in the ASian market. More cash from Asian Chelsea fans equals more cash for Roman to soend on Torres’ and Luiz’s. Now for Van Der Wiel and Lukaku and a proper right wing in the summer!
As for Roman upsetting the balance, he was the first to do it for sure, but most clubs have joined that style of spending since then:
As of 2009
1. Manchester United (total value: $1.835 billion)
2. Real Madrid ($1.3 billion)
3. Arsenal ($1.1 billion)
4. Barcelona ($1 billion)
5. Bayern Munich ($990 million)
6. Liverpool ($822m)
7. AC Milan ($800m)
8. Juventus ($656m)
9. Chelsea ($646m)
10. Inter Milan ($413m)
11. Schalke 04 ($384m)
12. Tottenham Hotspur ($372m)
13. Lyon ($333m)
14. Hamburg ($329m)
15. Roma ($308m)
16. Werder Bremen ($274m)
17. Marseille ($262m)
18. Borussia Dortmund ($261m)
19. Manchester City ($258m)
20. Newcastle ($198m)
@JJ Club What does the value of the clubs have to do with their transfer spending, though? There are all sorts of business models and attitudes toward debt on that list.
@Peter good points. I think geography is the key factor when it comes to developing the feelings you describe and when it comes to legitimacy. There certainly are “true” fans with no geographic attachment to a team. But geography is often a point of contention between the outside fans and the local fans. The local fans feel superior to the outsider “true” fans because of geography. The feeling doesn’t matter. As sport grows in popularity and supporters are spread out I think it will become less of an issue.
Clemantona’s rule (“that’s the team you stick with from then on”) is interesting because it invalidates neutral fans, something I think the NFL, in particular, tries very hard not to do. It’s also interesting that Clemantona was compelled to choose a new team because of geography and lack of access.
@Brian B
What is a neutral fan? If it’s a fan of the sport, then should they care who wins, or should they rather cheer for the sport. In other words, nice catches, high scoring games, strikes from 30 yards out, etc.
In major football (soccer) competitions, i always end up rooting against other teams rather than rooting for anybody but my team. In the world cup, I only really root for the French, but actively root against Italy, Argentina, the Dutch, and other “random” teams i’ve decided not to like over the years. This past world cup, was pretty terrible for me, but I can pull for a team like the US because I live here or Chile because that’s where my wife is from. But in the end, if the French don’t amount to anything then, eh, the rest of the cup means little.
What does bother me though, are random allegiances. Like a kid i know from columbia who would go as far as saying that his favorite team is spain, and somewhat randomly.
For the superbowl, it doesn’t matter to me at all who wins. I’m not going to pull for the steelers because they’re closer to NY (giants fan) than the packers.
I think this can work if you like certain sport and do not support anyone. I had a really hard time explaining to people that I did not care about 2010 World Cup because Croatia did not make it. If they were there, I would be in South Africa and stay as long Croatia would stay in competition. Without Croatia in it, 2010 World Cup had the same significance as some high school competition. Sure, I watched some games, but it was not my priority. I feel the same about Super Bowl. I love watching NFL and going to the games (season ticket holder), but without Seahawks in it, to me it is just another game that I could care less who will win it. I like watching the games without really supporting anyone, for example, Champions League games during lunch time on West Coast because I just like soccer (the same applies to NFL during breakfast on Sunday), but there is nothing that can compare to joy of victory when you support someone. I am still smiling about Seahawks win over Saints this year, but at the same time the agony of defeat is something that lives with you. Even after almost three years, I still have this sinking feeling in my stomach every time when I remember Croatia – Turkey game from EURO 2008 (from heaven to hell in 60 seconds).
@Zach I couldn’t agree more…..my draw to soccer was that I likened it to my passion for my university
Also, I am a big baseball fan and more specifically a die-hard Chicago Cubs fan, yet I hail from Houston, Tx….I get grief about it all the time but I chose the Cubs when I was 10 years old because my favorite player played for them and I’ve stuck with them…..not that I dislike the local team, I just like the Cubs more
@Zach I’d second this comment. Having just come through yet another read-through of Fever Pitch (arguably the closest on-paper glimpse an American can get of the British lifetime fan’s mentality), I’m reminded more of my own relationship to Stanford than of any affinity I have for a professional team.
Though it’s not my alma mater, it’s far dearer to my heart than the other major, local sports establishments (the 49ers and the Giants), and I’ve certainly been to more games and am more emotionally invested. I can see myself picking a team for this year’s Super Bowl — or any Super Bowl, for that matter — based on nothing more than gut feeling and my sister’s expert advice, but when it comes to the NCAA, my pick is certain.
I don’t care about teams who aren’t Stanford, except when their games would somehow affect it; and barring a certain grudge against the SEC for taking all our TV coverage away, I can’t really bring myself to root for random college teams. But, I’ll never, ever cheer for U$C, or anyone with even a passing relationship to it; and I know every verse to “The Dirty Golden Bear”.
I think the situation is exactly the same for European NBA fans. Most European basketball fans I have met either express a preference for the Lakers or Bulls depending on their age. I have met Europeans who follow the NBA as closely as any American, but if you get some guy from Lithuania talking to a guy form Chicago, surely the Chicagoan will discount the Lithuanian’s appreciation of the Bulls.
Well there’s the cliche of Man United and Liverpool supporters from London in the UK, I guess that’s pretty much the same?
“I wonder if local supporters will ever accept a dedicated fan from Asia or the United States as an equal.”
I don’t think so. Football is about shared cultural heritage and shared experiences, through good times and bad. Picking a team because they’re good or they’re on Match of the Day every week or David Beckham plays for them won’t really ever cut it against that.
Ultimately, the local supporters, the ones who are there on the terraces, will be the ones who are there when times are bad. When Manchester City were in the third tier a decade ago, or Leeds United last year, the people that kept those clubs going weren’t the ones from the Far East or America – they were the local fans.
To a lot of local fans, there was never really a question of choice in who we supported. It was the club our dads took us to watch as a kid. Choosing a club (especially a Premiership ‘Big-4′ side) doesn’t really sit well with those of us lumped with supporting a team destined to spend their days in the lower divisions traipsing round a succession of the worst towns in England and capitulating to a team of Neanderthals playing in a stadium apparently constructed from crudely hammered together pieces of scrap metal around a square of swampland.
No amount of knowledge of John Terry could convince me that a Chelsea fan from Ohio watching Fox Soccer Plus could actually understand any of this.
The tragedy that is being an American European Football fan. Brilliant.
@M.G. What about the A-League. In “soccer” it’s not the same here as in the US. In Australia (unless you live in Darwin, Hobart, Alice Springs, Canberra etc) you have the choice of a local team AND a European team.
one interesting thing I haven’t seen mentioned here is the phenomenon among american footie fans to base their ‘club allegiance’ however transitory it may be on particular players or groups of players together (or managers for that matter) at a club that may spark an interest in following the club. I mean.. just look at how FSC’s ratings for Italian football presentations have gone down since Mourinho left for Spain…
@t’OM But the A-league teams have no real emotional history, so the only real way to pick a team is to support the one based near you, in my opinion (the exception is the Heart vs Victory two-club city situation).
Excellent read. As a young American Arsenal fan, I have recently been grappling with this issue myself. I often make fun of a Chelsea-supporting friend as a band-wagoner and point out the Russian money, (lack of) club history, etc., but then I realized that it’s not as though I’m from Islington myself, and despite all the reasons I feel a strong affinity to Arsenal, I would be considered a ‘fake’ fan to anyone who grew up as a supporter. I’ve attended a match, love the English matchday environment, but really, it was still Thierry Henry on the TV that brought me to love the club, not watching Liam Brady in person. At the end of the day, I too support a “Top Four” club no matter how much I insist it’s more than that.
But as an American what am I to do? Support a smaller club solely for the sake of supporting a smaller club? Abandon Arsenal because of this new-found guilt of their success? Surely doing so in an attempt at authenticity is even more fake. I just have to accept that I’m one of many American fans who finds themselves in this limbo, and hope that the game evolves to make it less awkward without sacrificing the true supporters.
Surely the mark of a “true” fan is whether or not you attend matches? Despite matchday revenue being overtaken by TV and sponsorship deals, the game itself would be the same without this money and the global TV audiences.
@Dave W So all I have to do is hop on a plane, buy a ticket, and take my seat at the Emirates Stadium?
@Brian_B
Even that wouldn’t save you. It’s already too late for you to shed the ‘plastic fan’ tag…
What this article touches on slightly is how intimately support is tied up with identity. Who you support, where you’re from, they should be one and the same. To support a football team without ever belonging to the community seems weird – what are you actually supporting? It’s like you’re co-opting something that doesn’t belong to you. I know it’s something that is common and accepted but it just seems perverse.
For me, the football team I support contributed to forging my sense of identity. Since moving away, it has become more important to me and going to Wrexham matches, seeing familiar faces, hearing familiar accents provides links to that sense of home. I just couldn’t imagine supporting a football team on a whim.
Brian B,
I’m sorry, I can see that my tone may have been construed as sneering. I didn’t mean it like that. I wanted to make a romantic point about football being a community game originally and that if we are to ask relative and abstract questions regarding a hierarchy of fan; then surely this can only be judged by tradition and heritage, if at all.
When you consider the awful, mercantile status that the game now has, and how unsavoury this is to so many (especially traditional, or “true” fans), it is still, most definitely a fun game. The thousands of supporters who attend games are essential to the spirit and atmosphere of this game in a way that the millions of TV viewers are not (ever seen a game played behind closed doors?). If global markets or TV didn’t exist, football still would, and people would want to go and watch it, especially in areas where it has always been played. (And although the quality may diminish without the wealth and the global interest, surely the “true” fans would persevere?).
I don’t think this means people born in Islington are better fans than you necessarily, or diminishes your own loyalty to your particular club, I was just being logically flippant.
As an English fan who doesn’t support his local team, I’m pretty sure that in this country it comes down to one thing: you shouldn’t choose your team. As an impressionable young football fan, without many ties to my local big club, I followed the team of my favourite player, and while almost 20 years has passed since he left the club, I’m still a fan of them.
However, I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve had to explain to people why I support them and not my local club. The simple answer is that I chose them, whereas everybody else (aside from the impressionable young football fans running around in Lampard and Gerrard shirts), supports their local team. In other words, they did not choose.
There are a whole host of other factors – going to games, being part of community etc. – but the distinction everyone sees between “real” fans and “plastic” fans/gloryseekers, whether they’re from foreign shores or just Man U fans from London, is that one set chose their team, the other didn’t.
I know that this is a super-late response but an ESPN.com writer, Bill Simmons, has written at length about how to be a fan. If you do not already read him, you should. At his funniest, he has me sweating from laughter. He’s a ‘Spurs fan, by the way.