Should you support your local team?

Discussion in 'BigSoccer Polls' started by Deranged, Jan 14, 2014.

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Should you support your local team?

  1. Yes

    98 vote(s)
    73.7%
  2. No

    20 vote(s)
    15.0%
  3. Not sure

    15 vote(s)
    11.3%
  1. tudobem62014

    tudobem62014 Member+

    Feb 26, 2014
    Club:
    FC Barcelona
    Sure I'll go to a Quake game, hopefully in a couple decades they will play for the club world cup. It's easy to cheer on the 49ers. Am I a Giants fan? Sure, but not if they play the Oakland A's, because I grew up with that team. Even use to practice on their field. But when it comes to international soccer I cheer on both Brazil and the USA and to a lesser extent Mexico (a lot of my friends growing up were Mexican). If USA plays Brazil I will of course root for USA. But I am definately a Brazil fan despite not having any Brazilian blood. They were the team I grew up watching when I was a kid. I can't help it. I was gutted when Zidane knocked in those headers and physically got sick after watching the Germans destroy them in Belo.
     
  2. Rana catesbeiana

    Mar 11, 2008
    Club:
    FC Barcelona
    Football culture isn't only professional clubs. Is it ok to ignore local amateur and half-pro clubs? There aren't top level clubs in Spain everywhere either, for example if I live in Extremadura or in Aragon, that's the case. Is it ok to support Barca then?
     
  3. EvanJ

    EvanJ Member+

    Manchester United
    United States
    Mar 30, 2004
    Club:
    Manchester United FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    One difference between the USA and Spain is that a Spanish club could hypothetically win promotion to La Liga just through performance on the field. Binghamton, NY has an amateur club that qualified for the U.S. Open Cup, but no matter how well they do on the field MLS wouldn't accept a club in a city that small. I would be fine with you liking your local amateur club and Barcelona, and I would be fine with a person in Vermont liking a local amateur club and an MLS club.
     
  4. Rana catesbeiana

    Mar 11, 2008
    Club:
    FC Barcelona
    If the local support is strong enough, who knows what kind of a giant the club will grow to be. I don't think MLS's structure is set in stone. Perhaps even there could even be a system in which you win promotions. Support is always valuable.

    I'm cool with people in Vermont supporting whatever clubs they want, MLS, local amateur, both or neither. I just don't see how it's anyone's right to tell them what they should do and feel.
     
  5. barroldinho

    barroldinho Member+

    Man Utd and LA Galaxy
    England
    Aug 13, 2007
    US/UK dual citizen in HB, CA
    Club:
    Manchester United FC
    Nat'l Team:
    England
    Apparently so. If you look at my avatar, the crest on the upper-right is not the England crest. It is the badge of Great Yarmouth Town FC, my actual hometown team. I "support" them after a fashion. I have of course attended games but living in the west coast of the US means I can only get results. They are a pro team who play around 9 or 10 divisions down in the Eastern Counties First Division.

    Anyhoo, the reason I raise them is that most games are attended by around seventy to eighty fans. That's not a typo.

    For residents living in Great Yarmouth, the local teams are considered to be Norwich City or Ipswich Town. So yes, it's fine culturally to ignore the team of the town you live in if it is below a certain level.
     
    CantonaSeagulls repped this.
  6. Ollie Marsh

    Ollie Marsh New Member

    Mar 18, 2015
    Club:
    Yeovil Town FC
    I'm a fan of my local team Yeovil Town and a lot of my fellow supporters also have a second team, normally Man United/Chelsea/Arsenal etc.

    It was interesting when they were promoted to the second division because we actually played a lot of people's 'second teams' such as QPR/Derby County.
     
  7. CantonaSeagulls

    CantonaSeagulls New Member

    Dec 20, 2014
    New York
    Club:
    Manchester United FC
    Are you aware that NASL and USLPro are also professional leagues?
     
  8. dusty122

    dusty122 New Member

    Apr 11, 2015
    Club:
    Manchester United FC
    no, i dont think u "should" support your local team. i support ManU and im from Canada and National i support Mexico.
     
  9. TheCoachingJourney

    TheCoachingJourney New Member

    Apr 12, 2015
    Club:
    Arsenal FC
    Family ties are also important. If you're raised somewhere else but your family still supports the team, sometimes proximity is less important compared to how you're raised
     
    barroldinho and RobinVanRobben repped this.
  10. RobinVanRobben

    May 1, 2014
    Club:
    --other--
    Nat'l Team:
    --other--
    The first word I learned in Dutch was "kak". All the Ajax gear my Opa brought when visiting is still held high today. TFC is my local team, though, and the two meeting is likely never going to happen. My support lies to those two within their confederations. In the event of a Club World Cup game (chuckle, chuckle), ummm, hmmm, well I'll have to think about that.

    Canada vs Netherlands in Montreal this summer will definitely have me decked out in red. Always red at the national level.

    Any TFC, Fury, Eddies or VWC fans cheering for Limp-act? Opinions on that?
     
    El Chuma repped this.
  11. TingXuan

    TingXuan Member

    Jan 15, 2015
    Malaysia
    Club:
    Arsenal FC
    Nat'l Team:
    Malaysia
    I don't follow or watch my country's soccer team,I like the English league,they play lot better football and had superstar from all over the world :D
     
  12. sherae

    sherae New Member

    May 22, 2014
    Club:
    Real Madrid
    Hi! This is a really interesting question. I grew up in a family where both my immigrant parents weren't big sports fans, so I kind of had to discover that on my own. I ended up becoming a competitive athlete and did gymnastics and tennis, and went to a college that had a very competitive athletics program so following sports became more natural for me. For soccer, after the 1998 World Cup, I decided I had to choose an elite level soccer team and had to look outside the US because there wasn't really a competitive league here the time. When I looked at all the international soccer teams I could root for, it came down to which athlete I admired the most and that guided my decision. I was a HUGE Thierry Henry fan, so by default I followed him at Arsenal, and then when he retired, I had to choose another team. Today I'm a Barcelona fan, mostly because of Messi and Neymar Jr. The same happened for me in the NBA. Although I am from the Bay Area, I was a big fan of Michael Jordan so I followed him closely at the Chicago Bulls. I am still a Golden State Warriors fan, but the early days of my childhood were spent following the Bulls. For those of us that didn't grow up with parents or families that already had allegiances to local teams, we had to discover that on our own and I don't think that makes us less of a fan for not initially choosing the local team. As another member mentioned, sometimes you don't choose your team, but the teams (and/or players) choose you.
     
  13. jvgnj

    jvgnj Member

    Apr 22, 2015
    You're likely to encounter some skepticism if you don't root for your local team unless you have some compelling reason (ie your dad roots for them). I think this is true of all sports
     
  14. El Chuma

    El Chuma BigSoccer Supporter

    Sep 17, 2005
    San Diego
    Club:
    New England Revolution
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Plastics galore...
     
  15. barroldinho

    barroldinho Member+

    Man Utd and LA Galaxy
    England
    Aug 13, 2007
    US/UK dual citizen in HB, CA
    Club:
    Manchester United FC
    Nat'l Team:
    England
    I would say you were more a fan of particular players than of clubs, which IMO is completely fine. However, I'm confused that you are currently following Barca but have Real Madrid listed in your profile as your club.
     
    El Chuma repped this.
  16. CoJo_93

    CoJo_93 New Member

    Jul 11, 2015
    Club:
    Sporting Kansas City
    Depends on how you define local, as I was born an AF base so yeah don't really have one.
     
  17. Benando_NFFC

    Benando_NFFC Member

    Jul 19, 2015
    Club:
    Nottingham Forest FC
    People should follow whoever they like be it local or 5000 miles away provided they're prepared to invest the time in getting to understand and follow their chosen team.

    The biggest gripe I have is with people who say they support a team despite not having a clue or even watching their team. They merely latched onto the club because they were winning or star players of their players - I imagine some of the 'die hard' Man U fans who turn up for their pre-season Middle East tours still think Beckham and Giggs play for them.

    At a local level, these are the folk who turn up for trips to Wembley but will never attend a home match and regurgitate second hand information they've heard about the team when trying to look knowledgable.

    Thats the worst type of football fan for me.
     
  18. EvanJ

    EvanJ Member+

    Manchester United
    United States
    Mar 30, 2004
    Club:
    Manchester United FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    I'm kind of like that with Genoa CFC, who I don't spend much time learning about, but they're not an elite club like Manchester United was and hopefully goes back to being. I agree that a person who thinks Beckham and Giggs still play for Manchester United isn't a real fan.
     
  19. guignol

    guignol Moderator
    Staff Member

    Apr 28, 2005
    mermoz-les-boss
    Club:
    Olympique Lyonnais
    Nat'l Team:
    France
    shame about that plane crash though.
     
  20. rustic_cheese

    rustic_cheese New Member

    Aug 16, 2015
    Really up to the individual.

    I try to support my local CO teams.... but uhh.... its hard when they're no good lolol
     
  21. ntoumert

    ntoumert New Member

    Sep 3, 2015
    Club:
    Arsenal FC
    Wow interesting question. Yeah it's good, but I don't think you should feel obligated
     
  22. Kappa74

    Kappa74 Member+

    Feb 2, 2010
    Seattle
    Club:
    Seattle Sounders
  23. MISLGrapher

    MISLGrapher Member

    Sep 8, 2015
    Arlington, TX
    Club:
    --other--
    Nat'l Team:
    Finland
    I wouldn't say your local team per se, but once you pick a team, stick to it.

    I've moved around a bit in my life. I was born in Iowa, lived most of my life in Ohio, went to college in Massachusetts, and now live in Texas. While I live close to the Dallas Sidekicks and FC Dallas, I don't care much about either of them; I'll cheer for them if I go to a game, but I don't live and die by them. I loved the Cleveland Force and Cleveland Crunch since I grew up on those teams. Likewise in other sports, I'm a Cleveland fan all the way.

    And Chelsea. I jumped on that bandwagon in college since my roommate was a fan of them. For international play, I go for Finland first in most sports as my family is of Finnish descent and I still have cousins there.

    I feel that there's something of an obligation to cheer for your hometown team, or at least from where you have the most ties. My formative years came in Cleveland, so those are my teams. But I feel you should at least have a degree of support for the teams wherever you live-- not out of obligation, but just because they're there. If you don't support them at least a little, they can disappear. As I learned with Cleveland indoor teams and the Cleveland Browns, you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone. Use it or lose it.
     
  24. RichardL

    RichardL BigSoccer Supporter

    May 2, 2001
    Berkshire
    Club:
    Reading FC
    Nat'l Team:
    England
    Anyone can support whoever they want. Nobody should feel compelled to support their local team.

    In fact, I'd bet there are hardly any fans at all who support their local team because they feel they ought to.

    The curious thing is why some people don't feel any pull for the team that represents their area.
     
  25. Jenks

    Jenks Member+

    Feb 16, 2013
    Club:
    --other--
    I don't think it's that odd, especially in England, where the club's links to their local actual area are often tenuous at best.
     

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