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As a West Ham supporter I am always frustrated that they always clock off in the 87th minute. They have new managers and super signings but remain consistently rubbish.
I've enviously watched how Brighton have turned themselves into a good club that play til the ref blows the whistle.
My dad was a Brighton supporter and soon they will be my nearest club. On paper I feel I would qualify to be one of their supporters but is my heart forever destined to be broken by those lazy gits in East London?
Tell me your tales about jumping ship.
Man U supporter here (and I don't live in Manchester...). My son seemed to decide to support Man U based on my prejudices and now seems to be stuck with a shit team....😂😂😂
As an Ipswich fan, if only.
Honestly wish I could erase Middlesbrough FC from my mind like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, the misery and pent up frustration of the last 20 years or so..... be happy not to be interested in football at all.
No you can't (don't read that in a cockney accent?)
I know nothing about football but isn't changing teams kinda like being a grass / nonce / paedo?
I can’t believe this is even a question?
You can, but only if your team is Rangers or Celtic and you wish to not have your football so inextricably conflated with Northern Ireland politics.
To be sung to the tune of The Red Flag:
Hello, hello, how do you do
We hate the boys in royal blue
We hate the bhoys in emerald green
So **** the Pope and **** the Queen
Sadly this song doesn't really rhyme properly anymore. Sad times.
It's a pretty odd concept that you can't change. If you support them long enough then it'll be a totally new team with a different manager, playing a different style of football. You are basically liking the team name and the shirt colour.
It’s just some blokes kicking a football about. If you want to change just change. No harm will come from this.
I'm not a fan, so in my ignorance this may be a daft question. Does being one remove your free will and the ability to make your own choices?
It's a pretty odd concept that you can't change.
It's a pretty odd concept that you should support a team in the first place. Taken to its logical conclusion, everyone should just support the team that is most likely to win in any particular game.
Saying all that, you can change your team but you should expect to attract the scorn of any of your friends who also support football teams.
If you have no friends, that's kind of sad. But also, you can chop and change who you support at will.
Taken to its logical conclusion, everyone should just support the team that is most likely to win in any particular game.
Not really. I'd say neutrals generally support the underdog.
If you were doing it logically you'd pick a team.playing the sort of football you like. Then stop supporting them when they stop playing like that. Watching a team playing football you don't like is not logical
You won a footy team? Wow! Changing is easy. Sell it and buy another. Another weird bit of society I don't get. It is a team. Why support them?
We don't do it for anything else do we?
If you love KFC and they stopped selling chicken you'd go elsewhere, if you like Tom Hanks films and he started making episodes of Mrs Brown's Boys you wouldn't have to watch that. If you like Santa Cruz and they started only selling shoppers you wouldn't feel compelled to go mountain biking on one.
But if you like a football team that's it for life. No matter who takes over, how they play, how dire they get. That team you picked when you didn't even know where you lived is yours now
No matter who takes over,
To be fair, your team getting bought by someone who likes to commit genocide in their spare time is a relatively recent phenomena.
Standard responses from non football fans. I've suffered a lifetime of being an Everton fan. It's a community, something I've shared with family and friends since as far back as I can recall, and part of my identity.
I appreciate and even enjoy watching other clubs that are better run, play better football or win trophies, but my team are my team and that could never change.
Interestingly I follow rugby as much as football but have never supported a professional team.
It's all illogical but that's the way it goes.
There's no rationale or logic to it, and trying to explain one is no easier than explaining why whenever there's a football thread some people feel obliged to join in and make the same tired old comments.
To the OP - yes, you can. I did, and I'm not ashamed. I've spoken many times about having my own home team club, but also a love for my Mum's home town team, who were the first team I saw and I fell in love with that day. Actually, that's a lie. Because of course the first time I saw them there was another team on the pitch, so they were equal first. And that other team, was who I had originally been taken to see.
NUFC vs BHAFC. Div 2, 5/5/79. Brighton needed to avoid defeat, I think, to be promoted to Div 1. My Dad's from Worthing, and him and my football mad Uncle got my Grandad to get tickets for us all and some friends in the Newcastle end of the seats. So I was taken to this monumental game as a Brighton fan. And although Brighton won, 2-0, something about the atmosphere, the fans all shouting and singing in unison - well I admit it. I ditched my loyalty to my Dad's club there and then and was a Newcastle fan since.
So there you are. If you're under 10, you can have a second choice as long as it's made for good reason and within about 3 mins of realising you made a mistake first time. After that - nah, you're stuck with it.
Up until the age of 10 I followed Chelsea because my dad bought me the shirt, and he knows nothing about soccerball only GAA. Then for some reason I swapped with my best mate who also played for the school. I was also his best man. So he gave me Leeds and I gave him Chelsea. He passed away so we cannot swap back.
Then I worked out I didn't grow up in either places so switched to Reading.
Should have grown up in Barcelona.
Growing up in Manchester my mum saw a t-shirt in a sports shop bargains bin and bought it as it had United on the badge. So for a few weeks/months there was a happy hammer running around until I knew anything about football really. Ended up supporting the other United in the end but still have an odd soft spot for West Ham.
whenever there's a football thread some people feel obliged to join in and make the same tired old comments
Uwot uwot uwotuwotuwot
Born and bred in Ayr 40 miles from Glasgow . None of my parents were interested in football but I was. I went to Ayr United games with my pals as a kid from roughly age 12 or so. I should have been an Ayr United supporter. I have been a Celtic fan since I first knew anything at all about football at the age of 6 in 1968. You don't choose which club you support they choose you 😁
As an outsider looking in, given the vast majority of a football team staff, on and off the pitch, are essentially a group of bought in mercenaries on a transient journey club to club through their career,, fan loyalty does look a bit baffling.
For me there are two types of fan. Those that go to matches, go with friends, have a season ticket and sit/stand next to the same folk week in week out. They sing the songs and going to the ground or travelling as a group to away games is part of thier life. I get that - I wouldn't want it - but I get it.
Then their are the TV fans. Never go to watch matches, don't have an affinity with the club's location. They chose that club for.....reasons lost in time, but very likely because they were quite good when they were kids. It's just them, sat alone on the sofa with a Stella shouting at the screen. That's just moronic.
OP.
More Importantly..
Have you got a tattoo, and how easy would it be to change it.
As an outsider looking in,
means you have missed a third, and probably a few others. In which I characterise myself.
As above I chose / was chosen by my Mum's home town team. I have lived most of my life about 300 miles away which makes going to games very difficult, although as kids when we spent time up there I'd always get taken along when I could wear Grandad down enough. I chose my Univ in no small part to the proximity, and got to go to most home games. You could walk up and buy a ticket then. Impossible now, it's all loyalty points and season tickets, and the same with away games... it's been impossible to get a ticket for an away game for decades now, when your team has such a following they can sell their away allocation several times only, quite rightly to those that can go regularly.
And it's not "very likely because they were quite good when they were kids" - we've memorably not won anything for over 50 years and been for a large part of it, unutterably shite. NO, HANG ON!!!
Sure, there's a few type 2's that now support any club, there's thousands, in the global era millions probably of others that follow them with a genuine love and affinity but live away, overseas, whatever, and characterising anyone that doesn't have the opportunity to regularly see them live as moronic is pretty hurtful.
No, but you can have a second choice. Ideally they don't play each other.
very likely because they were quite good when they were kids
Sorry, I should have been clear.....reasons might have been they were quite good...or it could be it was your mum's home town 😁. Equally weird. My dad was born and grew up within earshot of Old Trafford so for decades it was suggested that should be 'my team' by people who I met who were incredulous when I said I didn't have one to the "so who do you support" question. I tried it for a bit - but I just wasn't bothered enough to care. My dad was never into football so couldn't give a toss either. Was your mum? I.e. did you inherit her love of the team or was it just that's where she grew up?
No - sorry, type 2 fandom always seemed moronic to me. Being a fan of something you only interact with at distance on telly and have never been a habitual attender in the past. It's perfectly possibly to enjoy sport as a neutral without the need to invent yourself and aliegence.
For no reason at all I’m also a Triumph man. I’ve no interest in Nortons or Bsas and although I was in Australia for less than a year I probably lean towards Holden over Ford.
Regarding people who go to matches or watch on telly I’m neither.
My interest is purely watching the results come in. I guess the real drama and passion in football is all about avoiding relegation. A contest that West Ham can easily participate in.
And here was me thinking that you were a Goldwing man 😉 🙃
supported liverpool as a kid because well, you know, league titles, european cups etc. then questioned this reasoning in my twenties and decided that as i was born in oldham and they were sh1t, id support them instead, underdogs and all that. then they even went on to have 'glory days' themselves! i remember being the only oldham fan in our local for the semi-final in the early 90s, it was full of man utd fans (pretty much all of my mates). oldham winning with a few minutes left, they were all getting mardy, swearing and kicking furniture, then mark hughes equalised and all of a sudden it was a pub full of 'CHAMP-EE-OW-NI, CHAMPEE-OW-NI, OOH AY OOH AY OOH AY'. saw them in a different light after that, i thought are you really so fickle and idiotic?
i wouldnt say it was that game particularly, however it must have contributed towards it but as an even more 'reasoned' adult, i decided to leave football altogether. i had drifted into 'hating man utd' more than supporting a team itself, which i thought was just plain daft. it had been a big part of my life, my 'thing', but i questioned the 'fan mentality' of which i was part, the growing amount of cheating sportsmanship on the pitch, the insane amount of money in the game, and realised it just wasnt for me any more (jumpers for goalposts, norman bite-yer-legs hunter etc etc)
i honestly felt like a big weight had been lifted from my shoulders. no more caring about who wins a game, no more lost bets, weekends were free again, i seemed to have loads of free space in my head and i liked it.
never looked back. i rarely watch a game these days. i like to see forest doing well (lads got a season ticket) or my local team (lincoln) but it doesnt spoil my day now if they get beat.
still hate man utd tho and get an illogical small sense of pleasure when they get beat, knowing that my mates will still be swearing and kicking furniture (or the cat) somewhere 😀 (those old wounds must have been deeper than i thought!)
I worked with a bloke a few years back who was a spurs fan, he was fed up and started to half support Leicester too, it meant we could take the p*SS out of him twice as much and given Leicester's current form I reckon he's moved on again.
He was also half Irish so had a tattoo of half a shamrock & preferred to be addressed as Paddy rather than Stephen.
Was your mum? I.e. did you inherit her love of the team or was it just that's where she grew up?
Again, in between. As I said on other threads, she wasn't a fan as in attending games (she moved 300 miles away at 19yo), following every detail but she knew the big names in the team, was passingly interested in fortunes, but more than anything else never stopped being a proud geordie lass.
And whether 'people like you' understand it or not, the city and the team are inextricably linked, as are many other towns and cities. Estimated 300,000 turned out to watch a bus drive past a few weekends ago, from a city of nominally 800,000 people.
If you don't understand it that's fine, in many ways you're lucky. I'm too wise to kick furniture, cats or the wife whenever things go badly (that would have been a lot of kicking over the years) but doesn't mean I can't still be deeply invested without being a moron for doing it.
I don't go to footy any more and I don't really follow "my" team any longer but if you asked me who, it's them. (Yes @jonnyseven , when your club's most memorable season was losing 2 finals and getting relegated, you know you're in trouble ! Maybe that was what killed me off, though I'd already stopped going by then - never been to the Riverside).
I've been to matches of more local teams but it's not the same feeling (might be the age-gap I suppose; havent been to the boro for 35+ years). I could go repeatedly and probably really enjoy it but I wouldn't be a fan because deep-down I wouldn't care. If we moved to Teesside I'd probably start going again and it'd likely kill me !
As a United fan I will once again tune in this afternoon to watch the absolute dross on the pitch, as the battle with Spurs for 15th place hots up.
But I started supporting them in the late 70’s /early 80’s and we were rubbish then too, so the glory years were a very enjoyable blip.
I support United on the Frank Skinner geographical theory, that Old Trafford is the closest ground to where I was born. my dad was a lifelong Liverpool fan, but I had no interest in following him down that road.
The one concession I’ve made is that last season was the first one where I never went to Old Trafford for a match. I decided that enough was enough and I wasn’t going to carry on shelling out to watch this garbage and continue to line the pockets of owners who I despise.
Change clubs? Just no! You’re stuck with them no matter how bad it gets
I do have a soft spot for Burnley though after spending a great summer working at Turf Moor a few years ago, looking out of my ‘office’ window on to the pitch every day. The club just had a great atmosphere about the place and the people there were lovely. I’ll be chuffed to see them back in the top division next season
Hello, hello, how do you do
We hate the boys in royal blue
We hate the bhoys in emerald green
So * the Pope and * the Queen
This right here is one reason why I don't like football. It's often not about the team you follow, it's about which team you hate the most. That's a rash generalisation I know, but you don't get many snooker hooligans.
I followed British ice hockey for a couple of years, I 'supported' Manchester Storm. We'd all shout at Sheffield Steelers fans, but then both sets of fans would go for a pint together afterwards. It was friendly rivalry rather than a need to round off the evening with eight pints and a glassing because your team lost.
Prior to that I followed American football. At school my little group all picked teams to support, fairly arbitrarily. I chose the Denver Broncos, them having just lost to the Giants IIRC in that year's Superbowl. What was it someone said earlier about picking the underdog? I still watch the 'Owl, but I'll randomly pick a side to cheer on in the likely event that Denver hasn't made it again. If I can't decide, I'll go AFC.
I can't see myself switching allegiances, it's great if your team win and in their heyday Storm won a lot (Denver not so much), but I simply don't care sufficiently. I wouldn't go to a rock concert to see my band "win," it's the journey to the encore and lights up.
TL;DR - if you want to switch then do it. Many spectator sport fans are tribal, it rather depends on whether you want to be part of that particular tribe or whether you want to win. I can't imagine it being much fun in a pub full of supporters of team X when you're supporting team Y.
Nah, you can head off to Brighton or wherever, but deep down you'll always be looking for the West Ham result first on the classified check.
As someone who supported a deeply mediocre side through multiple relegations in the 90s, and now watching with amusement as 5th or 6th in the Premier League is considered the end of the world, you should know that nothing is permanent, there will likely be good stuff sprinkled among the bad.
Anyhow, you won a European trophy recently, did you not?
My dad was a Brighton supporter and soon they will be my nearest club. On paper I feel I would qualify to be one of their supporters but is my heart forever destined to be broken by those lazy gits in East London?
Tell me your tales about jumping ship
I'm a Gooner. Have been from the age of ten, always will be. It's my last emotional connection with north London where I grew up. My dad was a Liverpool fan - scouser - and my brother followed in his footsteps. As a result I went to some epic European nights at Anfield when it was in its pomp and sort of adopted Liverpool as a convenient second team, we also used to go and watch QPR at home a fair bit when Gerry Francis et al played for them and they were a good watch.
I could sort of buy into both Liverpool and QPR as second teams, but I don't really care deep down in the way I do about Arsenal.
It's pretty obvious that Sky TV coverage etc has sort of broken the geographical link to allegiance quite emphatically. These days kids often grow up supporting the winningest (sic) team regardless of where they're from, which I regard as fundamentally wrong. My neighbour comes from Wolverhampton but supports Arsenal for no particular reason bar the Wenger years I guess.
Anyway, football's about the highs and lows isn't it. Supporting the team regardless. Hating Spurs unconditionally. Once you have a visceral connection with a team, that's it, hence the horror of, say Newcastle United being taken over by the Saudis. You can adopt a second team, but I'm not convinced it can ever be the same. And of course the whole point of football is that it's completely meaningless and, at the same time, in the moment, means everything 🙂
Swap to a team in a different sport - one without vastly overpaid premadonnas who can't string a coherent sentence together fall over like they've been machine-gunned down after a blade of grass tripped them up.
Or as most call it, Rugby.
It's pretty obvious that Sky TV coverage etc has sort of broken the geographical link to allegiance quite emphatically. These days kids often grow up supporting the winningest (sic) team regardless of where they're from, which I regard as fundamentally wrong. My neighbour comes from Wolverhampton but supports Arsenal for no particular reason bar the Wenger years I guess.
Very much this and to use my home town Wrexham as an example you would never see kids around the town wearing a Wrexham shirt but boy has that changed in the last few years. Back to back to back ole ole!
premadonnas who can't string a coherent sentence
Stuck with them, "however bad it gets". And it can get very, very bad. Yesterday was yet another low point, but not as bad as being asset stripped to extinction by a property developer and playing village teams for a couple of seasons.
Did latch on to watching another team when I moved to another country - largely because of the political and musical connections of the supporters. It was also John Peel's "other team". I always like to see whoever is playing the Milton Keynes franchise win, even if it is Shrewsbury.
These days kids often grow up supporting the winningest (sic) team regardless of where they're from, which I regard as fundamentally wrong.
That was the case back when I was at school, so many Liverpool fans during their glory years in the 70s.
vastly overpaid premadonnas who can't string a coherent sentence together
Oh, the irony
FWIW, rugby is a game of cheating. Of course rugby fans won't admit it but it's all euphemisms like 'painting a picture for the referee', a celebration that no-one has a clue what's really happening in the scrum and the fouls may as well be decided by rolling a dice, of getting away with stuff wherever you can.
I like rugby, and in most cases at least if you get caught with hands in a ruck or whatever there's an acceptance that you were caught cheating, but pretending it's all innocent is bollocks - tight games are frequently decided by who gets caught least.
https://www.ruck.co.uk/list-five-iconic-moments-of-rugby-shthousery/
And what's the equivalent of bloodgate?
Swap to a team in a different sport - one without vastly overpaid premadonnas who can't string a coherent sentence together fall over like they've been machine-gunned down after a blade of grass tripped them up.
Or as most call it, Rugby.
Thanks very much for your contribution.
*yawns*
I may pop over to the rugby thread and remind everyone about your first week at university where all the societies are touting for members, you could ask “i’m looking to join a club for the very worst people on the planet. Preferably boorish, braying louts who revel in homophobia, casual racism, prehistoric 70’s style sexism and misogyny, all while inexplicably drinking each others piss.”
Ah yes… the rugby club is right over there. I believe there’s an initiation ritual that involves bumming a dog 🙄