Switching allegiance

[Satchmo Distel]

I liked Man U under Tommy Doc but went further off them with each subsequent manager. They were the anti-Liverpool under Docherty but Sexton was dour and Big Ron just spunked cash to try to catch Liverpool up. They often played beautiful football under Ferguson and I'll admit that I supported them in the season they lost out to Leeds then the one they finally won the title, but by 1999 I was wanting Bayern to beat them.

As to why I "needed" to support a top flight club when I was 10-12, simply because every other middle-school kid in Barnsley did so and there was huge peer pressure to pick one. Barnsley were in their worst ever Div 4 trough.

[johnr]

I've always been a West Ham fan - birthplace, family, all of that, my aunt washed the kit, my cousin swept the stands, my uncle did the youth recruitment - but went off of them, and football, with all the ICF and aggro around the game. Moved near to Orient, so started supporting them as I could get close to the game, and the players, and it was a fine time to be there. Got a girlfriend, took her there. She got obsessed, made that 'Yours for A Fiver' documentary for Channel 4, and our relationship fell apart during - sort of, because of - the making of it. So I never went again.

So back to West Ham it was, probably until what it says in my profile.

[danielmak]

I watch a lot of football and find it to be much more enjoyable if I can pick a team to follow. Watching as a neutral can be fun but only a game here and there. But for me the quirkiest choice of a team I try to follow is Independiente Santa Fe. Two things happened at the same time. First, a friend with whom I trade football dvds asked me if I would start recording Colombian league football games for him. Often I would let the games run in the background as I did other stuff, but soon started to get sucked in (not difficult because I enjoy South American football and this was at a time just before Colombian teams started to make some noise in continental competitions so the league was pretty exciting). Second, one of my good friends was living in Bogota for a while so I thought it might be helpful to her if I could send her some updates about football in Bogota. Give her something to chat about with strangers at parties. Of course, she could care less about football so my Santa Fe news fell on deaf ears when she only wanted updates about NCAA basketball, which has little to no appeal for me.

All of this is a bit boring by comparison to Gero's story. It seems to me that the possibility of sex would be the best reason for choosing to do almost anything.

[Various Artist]

My son has since transferred his allegiance to girls and all-night clubbing (which is understandable enough), even though he still has a season ticket.

I'm more fascinated in how you transferred your allegiance to serifs in the middle of that sentence, Aitch.

[Greenlander]

This thread is taking a very interesting turn and I'd love to know more about this. Did you have to bring your fuckin' dinner?

Got a girlfriend, took her there. She got obsessed, made that 'Yours for A Fiver' documentary for Channel 4, and our relationship fell apart during - sort of, because of - the making of it. So I never went again.

[Aitch]

When I type in the reply box on this site, a keystroke on mykeyboard does not always translate into a character on the screen: letters,spaces punctuation marks get missed out and the cursor doesn’t move properly.So I’ve taken to typing in Word and then cutting and pasting, even though thatdoesn’t always work. Can something be done about this?

ETA:
This is in answer to Various Artist. He's not quoted because the forum software wouldn't copy his post. Can nothing be done about this? It has taken me over five minutes to type this edit!

[3 Colours Red]

Have you tried using another browser, Aitch? Or starting your current one in safe mode?

[Aitch]

Have you tried using another browser, Aitch? Or starting your current one in safe mode?

Hmm thanks for the tip 3CR. Yes it seems to work a lot better in Chrome. So, anther allegiance switched.

[Uncle Ethan]

My very first game was Colchester v Brentford with my Dad, who was a Colchester fan having driven their team bus back in the 50s. For my seventh birthday (a week or so later I think) he took me to Portman Road to see Manchester United. Ipswich won 4-0 and I was smitten. Dad gave up going to Colchester to indulge me. We often went to Cambridge, or Leicester or even Highbury in the first season or two when Ipswich were away but it was always Ipswich for me. I never truly appreciated what he'd given up with his own team. My Dad was alright.

[johnr]

This thread is taking a very interesting turn and I'd love to know more about this. Did you have to bring your fuckin' dinner?

Ha. I think the 'fuckin' dinner' might be from the doc? I saw all the rushes, many a time - I was in the crowd during the half-time meltdown at Shrewsbury, our excitement at her getting the footage was almost uncontainable - but never watched the doc itself (someone here linked to it on Youtube a few years back, but I couldn't be arsed), and can't remember the detail.

[slackster]

That’s a lame to fame link right enough, johnr. Club for A Fiver being one of the excrutiating best of the football documentary genre. The star of the show, John Sitton, never really worked regularly in football again. Became a black cab driver and does mad rants on twitter instead.

And - apart from the girlfriend bit - my story isn’t that dissimilar.

Started watching Ilford FC as a kid because I could walk to their Lynn Rd ground with mates. When the moved and merged I lost interest. As a teenager wanted to go to West Ham, but soccer-indifferent parents were concerned about the hoolie element, so the compromise was I could go to Orient instead. I sort of followed the two through to my late twenties (it wasn’t unusual for Hammers, Spurs & Arsenal fans to go over Brisbane Rd when their team was away back then), until West Ham brought in the hated bond scheme and it was clear how the “top” clubs were planning to ditch the rest of the minnows and form the Premier League.

So I’ve been stuck with Orient only since about 1990, although I’d clearly developed an “open relationship” mentality by then & still have soft spots for local non-league outfits (Tonbridge Angels, Tunbridge Wells) and a fair number of European sides (Espanyol, Eintracht Frankfurt, Feyenoord, Venezia, Slask Wroclaw, Ceske Budjovice, Lorient, Trabzonspor, Zamalak), whose results I look out for and make an effort to see live when the opportunity arises.

[Stumpy Pepys]

I have teams in other countries and even in England that I have a fondness for but you can only have one team.

You're probably right, but the chances of my two teams ever meeting are astonishingly slim.

[treibeis]

You're probably right, but the chances of my two teams ever meeting are astonishingly slim.

You never know. They might invent an Anglo-German "Teams That Have Been In The Top Flight In The Last 20-Odd Years, But Are Unlikely To Manage It In The Next 20-Odd Years" Cup.

[EIM]

I used to support FC United. When I supported FC United I used to support Manchester United. These days I support Manchester United. My Facebook relationship status with FC United is currently "It's Complicated".

But this isn't really switching allegiance, as, at the time, we saw them as an extension of the original club. And the lack of a nebulous concept of Unitedness played its part in me falling out with the club. Among other things.

It's all very stupid, football isn't it? None of it matters. None of it. If you want to support someone else go for it. And if anyone has a problem with that, fuck them.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

You'll be drinking Stella next.

[Bored Of Education]

I think he was during the posting of that, erm, post.

[BallochSonsFan]

You're probably right, but the chances of my two teams ever meeting are astonishingly slim.

I had that a couple of years ago when Rangers were in the Championship on their way back up the divisions and Dumbarton were enjoying a rare spell of tier 2 participation. I went to a couple of the games and allowed a friend to use my season ticket for one of them. It was a no-win situation from a fan point of view as one team winning would clearly be a blow for my other team. On balance the Sons were never likely to win against Rangers and it was a freak set of circumstances that saw the games happen as anything other than a cup tie.

I just wrote it off as a quirk of circumstances and treated those games as one off matches.

[Benjm]

When I was a kid I absolutely loved Wolves, with bedspread, rug, wallpaper, etc. Now I keep half an eye out for their results but have been to Molineux only twice in the last five years. I have been to see Walsall, Fulham, Brentford, Brighton, Maidenhead and Wealdstone more regularly in that time, enjoying it as an afternoon out but without becoming besotted with any of them.

What I gradually realised over the years was that while I get a degree of pleasure from watching, or finding out about, Wolves and Walsall winning, it doesn't really spoil the rest of my day in the slightest if they lose. This isn't the case for committed supporters and is why I would hesitate to claim any allegiance in anything other than the vaguest terms.

[Hot Pepsi]

I used to support FC United. When I supported FC United I used to support Manchester United. These days I support Manchester United. My Facebook relationship status with FC United is currently "It's Complicated".

But this isn't really switching allegiance, as, at the time, we saw them as an extension of the original club. And the lack of a nebulous concept of Unitedness played its part in me falling out with the club. Among other things.

It's all very stupid, football isn't it? None of it matters. None of it. If you want to support someone else go for it. And if anyone has a problem with that, fuck them.

Supporting teams are an example of an “animating myth” and not in the sense of “a lie” but in the proper sense of “a story that helps us structure our lives,” even if, or especially if, we know it isn’t literally true.

The trick is to engage in that animating myth in a way that makes life more worth living. Because it’s possible - I know from experience - to play the “none of this really matters. We’re just temporary dust on a rock in a void” game about everything and that leads to nihilism and, very often, depression and suicide. Really.

But it’s also easy to invest a bit too much reality into these made-up dramas, and that can also be very destructive.

That’s why I like college hockey. It’s similar to how AdC described the pleasures of following the CFL. It’s “big” enough to not feel inconsequential, but not so big - like the NFL or college football or the Champions League - where its importance is just blown all out of proportion and the money is outrageous and it starts to feel really gross, for lack of a better word.


People who switch allegiances because they move or whatever weren’t usually all that invested to begin with and that’s not really their fault. Usually, people stay loyal to their childhood team because the strong memories and nostalgia, and so I suppose I feel a little sad for people who didn’t get that growing up, but as long as they have at least some happy childhood memories - maybe just not sports-related - it’s not a huge tragedy by any stretch.

I don’t understand how people can maintain a lifelong devotion to a team just because they liked their colors as a kid or whatever, but there’s nothing really wrong with that. I suppose once you start to follow team and know them, it starts to create a habit that forms a real bond, no matter how tenuous the first connection was. I guess I just never got that far with any of those or, in the case of my DC connections, a lot of bad memories interceded to break the bond. Whatever. To each their own.

But glory-hunters are, in my experience, really boring people or, worse, the sort of “winners” that love Trump because he’s so “successful.”


I’m surprised EIM still feels connected to ManU. Under the Glazers, that must be very hard.

[Gerontophile]

Played... fought at Thermopylae... potato tomato

<Applause>

Bitch.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

it is good isn't it?

HP, The first 8 years of the Glazers were the most successful period on the pitch in the club's history, (in spite of the glazers) and by the end of that time period they were so massively huge that the costs of being owned by the Glazers are basically pretty small. They're absolutely terrible people, but they are essentially irrelevant at this point. The big problem is that the person they've hired to run the club is a marketing whizz, but a footballing moron, with delusions of grandeur

[Hot Pepsi]

Oh. I didn’t have the timeline right in my memory.

Still, even when they have had success, they don’t seem to be operating in the best interest of the club’s local fans. That might even be understating the problem.

[ursus arctos]

Well, Berbaslug isn’t exactly a local fan. . . .

[EIM]

The club's a shambles. But they're my shambles, the shambles of all my mates, my Dad, my brother in law, and my nephew. I boycotted because of the Glazers, but they've won, haven't they? And FC United fucked it. So I'm reluctantly (morally speaking. I'm enjoying going back to OT with my mates greatly) back because, and I'll use this phrase even though he'll hate it in this context, I just want to watch some football.

[Hot Pepsi]

That makes sense. But the tickets are so expensive.