I need the kind of help that only a British person could give me.

[Mise]

It's also why you have rival clubs. There is, logically, no reason why Arsenal and Tottenham should hate each other so much, for such a long time. It makes no sense, when you think about it, that some really dumb grudge from 100 years ago that only like 20% of supporters on either side even know about these days is the source of such intense rivalry.

Except it does. Because even the best clubs in the country only win about half their matches -- so having a rival club or two means you can still take some sort of enjoyment from watching your irrationally loathed rival lose in their match as well. You get an extra chance of getting some sort of enjoyment from the weekend of sport. But this, again, depends on irrationality -- two fold, this time. First, the irrational loyalty for your own club, and second, the irrational hatred for the rival club. You need the irrationality; football depends on it.

 

[warpus]

Mise, yeah, you describe a lot of football fans in the UK. But there are still a lot of fairweather fans there, just like in the U.S. You are right that in North America it is a lot more common for someone to follow a sports club from another city. The geographic distances are just so great, often a person doesn't even have a local team to follow and has to look to other cities for a team worthy of his/her time and money. Teams also tend to migrate around from city to city, at least every once in a while.

But yeah, UK fans can be fairweather/bandwagon fans too.

 

[Mise]

TBH I'm not trying to start a "thing" about UK vs US supporters*. I agree there are loads of fairweather fans in the UK. What I'm saying is that these people are missing the point of supporting a team in the first place -- and missing half the fun in supporting a football team at all. I'm saying that it's not merely the "done thing" to pick a team and stick with it until you die. I'm saying that this is the best way to support a football team.


*-I know I literally started off by saying "Dear Americans", but it was more the sum total of what the OP was saying that motivated that, rather than the specific "fairweathered-ness" of the desire. I mean, "I've been reading about Manchester and apparently it's full of football hooligans" is a pretty archetypal "ignorant American" thing to say about Britain's second city. Same as when some guy said that the entire city of Birmingham was a "no go" area for non-Muslims.

 

[warpus]

TBH I'm not trying to start a "thing" about UK vs US supporters*. I agree there are loads of fairweather fans in the UK. What I'm saying is that these people are missing the point of supporting a team in the first place -- and missing half the fun in supporting a football team at all. I'm saying that it's not merely the "done thing" to pick a team and stick with it until you die. I'm saying that this is the best way to support a football team.

Let me say I 100% disagree that there is a "right way" to support anything.

Let me again try to illustrate why sporting cultures on both of our continents are so different. Take the city of Toronto. Largest city in Canada, 5-10 million people, depending on where you draw the exact borders. Only 1 top flight hockey team for people to support. Only 1 top flight basketball team to support. Only 1 top flight baseball team to support (in the entire country as well, mind you).. Only 1 top flight soccer team to support.

Compare to London, England, and how many football clubs there are for people to support. There are what, 4-5 in the Premier League alone? Then there's the Championship and all the levels below that.

It's a completely different scene. In England it is a LOT easier to stick to your local team, because.. there are local teams. Here in North America you usually have to travel to the nearest metropolis to find a professional team to support. And unless it's Los Angeles or New York, you'll usually only find 1 team to support there. So most people just don't have the option of supporting one local team forever. There is just no culture of such things happening, because there aren't many local teams for people to support.

Teams also have a habit of moving. Montreal used to have a baseball team, and then.. it's gone. Not relegated to a lower division, but just gone. And/or moved to another city and renamed, I can't exactly remember. Same with Vancouver's basketball team. One year, they just closed up shop and moved to the U.S.

Fans here don't have the luxury of picking their local team, who play at a local stadium, and supporting them for life. In some cases it's possible, but..

 

[W|M]

And, honestly, 90% of the time when we watch our teams play, they are not playing good football. They very often play terrible football.

No, that's just because you support Arsenal

 

[Mise]

@warpus: I didn't say "right", I said "best". Also, we're talking about English football, not American/Canadian sports or teams. Most people in this country don't support their local team, because their local team is crap. Instead, they arbitrarily pick a team that was in the top division when they were about 7 or 8 years old. That's why so Liverpool fans are 40-year-old men -- because they grew up at a time when Liverpool dominated English football, and so they supported them. Most men my age are Man Utd fans for the same reason; it's also why Chelsea are so popular with men in their early 20s, but not with men a decade older than that.

@west india man: Arsenal are better than 90% of teams in English football, and most of our games are terrible. Most football supporters simply watch crap football week in week out. We don't support teams because they play good football; we support them and then maybe they sometimes play good football occasionally.

 

[warpus]

I mean, I 100% disagree that there is a "best" way to support a sports team as well.

You support yours the way you want, I'll support mine the way I want, the guy down the street will support the way he wants. It's just sports, nothing overly important, there is no "best" way to do it.

 

[Lohrenswald]

You pick the weirdest battles to make your stand, warpus

 

[warpus]

You pick the weirdest battles to make your stand, warpus

What stand am I making here? I'm merely engaging in discussion with another forum member, as we happen to disagree on something significant enough to warrant further dialogue.

It's not like I have a battle axe in my left hand and am screaming out Mise's name vowing revenge on the disrespect he has shown to my family. Not everything is a stand or a battle, there's no need to get so dramatic

 

[Traitorfish]

I mean, I 100% disagree that there is a "best" way to support a sports team as well.

You support yours the way you want, I'll support mine the way I want, the guy down the street will support the way he wants. It's just sports, nothing overly important, there is no "best" way to do it.

It's precisely because sports isn't important that there's a best way to do it. If it had real material consequences, we'd have to be pragmatic, but it doesn't, so principles are all there is.

 

[warpus]

It's precisely because sports isn't important that there's a best way to do it. If it had real material consequences, we'd have to be pragmatic, but it doesn't, so principles are all there is.

But if all we are arguing are principles of no real material consequence, who's to say which principle is better than the next? Maybe the best way to support your club is to watch every game in a bathtub with a towel on your head.

 

[Traitorfish]

But if all we are arguing are principles of no real material consequence, who's to say which principle is better than the next?

A mixture of consensus, tradition and peer-pressure. Same as in most areas of life. And the consensus in English football, in football generally, is that even if you picked a team for insincere bandwagonish reasons, you ride that bandwagon to the grave.

 

[warpus]

A mixture of consensus, tradition and peer-pressure. Same as in most areas of life. And the consensus in English football, in football generally, is that even if you picked a team for insincere bandwagonish reasons, you ride that bandwagon to the grave.

Most people pick a team for "insincere" reasons. Those reasons being peer pressure, consensus, and tradition. A sincere reason to follow a club, IMO, is having some sort of an emotional connection to it, whether that means you going to a game and witnessing some sort of a historic moment in person (this is how I became a TFC fan), feeling some sort of a connection to a player or manager, or something similar.

I don't think it really matters why people follow the clubs that they do. It's all of no consequence, like you said. There is no "best" way to follow your club, there are just different ways.

 

[Traitorfish]

Most people pick a team for "insincere" reasons. Those reasons being peer pressure, consensus, and tradition. A sincere reason to follow a club, IMO, is having some sort of an emotional connection to it, whether that means you going to a game and witnessing some sort of a historic moment in person (this is how I became a TFC fan), feeling some sort of a connection to a player or manager, or something similar.

I'd agree that sincere support is grounded in an authentic emotional connection to the club, but tradition seems to me the surest and most sincere basis for such a connection, because it's continuous and self-evident, whereas a connection grounded in a moment of revelation or regard for a particular individual may prove to be a fleeting. As Mise has pointed out, supporting a club isn't about great heroic sporting deeds, not really, it's about turning out week after week regardless of how badly your team plays, about continuity, about doing something because it is simply what you do; in other words, it's about tradition. I mean, you ever see Fiddler on the Roof? It's like that that, only with football instead of Judaism and the middle class instead of cossacks.

Moreover, you have to distinguish between a team and a club, and in European sports, there is such a distinction. A team is a group of people playing a game on a field, a club is an institution, a subculture, itself situated within the subculture of English football. It has its own mores, its own standards, its codes of honour and ethics. As soon as you adopt the label of "supporter", you buy into the value-system. If you don't like those mores, that's fine, but that just means that you watch the game as a game as nothing more, and leave the business of support to the supporters.

 

[warpus]

I'd agree that sincere support is grounded in an authentic emotional connection to the club, but tradition seems to me the surest and most sincere basis for such a connection, because it's continuous and self-evident, whereas a connection grounded in a moment of revelation or regard for a particular individual may prove to be a fleeting. As Mise has pointed out, supporting a club isn't about great heroic sporting deeds, not really, it's about turning out week after week regardless of how badly your team plays, about continuity, about doing something because it is simply what you do; in other words, it's about tradition.

It's about creating your own tradition around your support of the team that you happen to be supporting. And that begins with some sort of a reason for you to have picked that team to support in the first place. Which I just think is more "honourable" if you did it due to an emotional connection of some sort, like seeing an amazing goal or some historic moment or meeting a player or seeing some play in person or having memories of watching certain games with your dad or just really enjoying that team's style of play or whatever it may be.

Just following a team because everybody else in your family does it and that's the way things are, that's.. boring.

Moreover, you have to distinguish between a team and a club, and in European sports, there is such a distinction. A team is a group of people playing a game on a field, a club is an institution, a subculture, itself situated within the subculture of English football. It has its own mores, its own standards, its codes of honour and ethics. As soon as you adopt the label of "supporter", you buy into the value-system. If you don't like those mores, that's fine, but that just means that you watch the game as a game as nothing more, and leave the business of support to the supporters.

I understand what you mean by the association with the club and culture (but don't see how it's relevant to the first paragraph I quoted). The team that I support locally is a team but it is also a club. The team are the players on the pitch, the club is.. well, everyone. The club motto is "All for one" and the front office really pushes forward the idea that the fans are a big part of the whole thing. Season ticket holders aren't treated like royalty or anything like that, but the ideas of "the club" that you talk about.. that is present here as well, including right in the official name. A lot of season ticket holders are a part of official supporter groups, who really embody their particular takes on this club and its culture. They bring this with them tot he games and make a lot of noise, and the players say that it helps them play better. We're all in this together, etc.