How did you become an Arsenal fan?

Started following Arsenal after watching World Cup matches with Wrighty, Adams, Seaman. Been to London a bunch of times, and always liked spending time in North London (esp. Highbury/Islington area).

 

You know youve hit on quite an interesting point there. Despite my previous attempt at humour (such as it is) Ive always CLAIMED loyalty to Arsneal due to family history and locale, but to be honest ive always been fairly apathetic about club football. It took the arival of the World or European cups and England to get me to sit down and watch 90 minutes of football.

Wenger's Arsenal however sparked a passion in me that I once only held for my national team, and I find myself increasing disinterested in international football until it reaches the knock-out stages...

 

IIRC Wright never played in a World Cup finals tournament.

 

*sigh*

Sometimes I wish that bigsoccers' tos included mandatory reading of the hundred million or so threads started by non-Americans accusing Americans of being glory-hunters for all of you who live elsewhere.

For many of us there were absolutely no avenues to explore teams other than the most prominent ones. In the 80's and early 90's there was no satellite tv, no internet, no local coverage and all the print coverage that one could actually afford carried news that was typically a few months old. I was fortunate enough to get 2 condensed games a week, one Italian and the other Spanish. The Spanish games were invariably Real or Barca, the Italians were Milan, Inter, Juve or Napoli (remember they had Maradonna). I chose to like Milan and Barca for their Dutch players after I somehow got a copy of Tor: Total Football, the euro 88 highlight film.

I grew up in a Red Sox - Patriots family. I know they're both the sh1t now but they were both embarassingly poor until a few years ago. I was never a glory hunter, I just wanted to watch soccer, and it's not my fault that I could only watch the best teams on Earth. If I had 1/1000th of the coverage that you folks across the ocean have it may have turned out differently, but I didn't and I'm ok with that.

Oh, and please remember that I gave you rep for rooting for the Sox, I didn't call you a plastic fan or a glory hunter and I won't laugh if I ever see a picture of you in a sox cap. OK, if you're funny looking I may snicker a bit but it won't have anything to do with your choice of baseball teams.

 

So, explain how I should support a team that has only a few games televised to me each year

 

So we all have to support crap teams to be "real" fans? Even if some fans jumped aboard the Arsenal bandwagon, what does it matter? As long as you care about the team, who really gives a rat's ass? You could call me a glory hunter since I haven't been following them all that long. But I don't order the pay-per-views and get up at 7:30am for live matches and buy $70 jerseys and log onto soccernet.com and the BBC Sport website for no reason. I'm pretty sure most of us care enough about the team that we'd be on BigSoccer posting messages with random strangers. Who cares how you got into following a team and why. If you're a ManUre fan because they were the team on tv all the time or because you come from Manchester, Vermont, I'm not gonna judge you as long as you care enough about them to actually follow them. But quit coming in here and telling everyone on what's the right and wrong way to pick a team and then say "Personally, that's not for me....." because personally, I don't give a ********.

 

this is interesting...
in 1991 sports illustrated ran an article on arsenal mentioning that fidel castro was a fan. it also talked about the brawl w/ manure and the fans "you can stick your two points up your arse" chant. Throw in the red and white and the cannon and I was hooked. Occasionaly in USA Today you'd see the results of the weekend and I'd look or the Arsenal result. Then there was the sports science show featuring Arsenal players that came on the discovery channel a few times. I even tried to convince the players at my college to wear red and white hoop socks so they'd look like the Arsenal. Then moved to Atlanta and saw my first game on tv.

 

I follow Sheffield Wednesday, Tenerife and FC Leichtenstein

am i a real fan yet?

 

Ok, let me take a crack at this. But you'll have to bear wtih me through the backstory.

I grew up in a time and place where there was no soccer. In rural northern California, about 4 hours north of the bay area, there was no youth soccer, we had two TV channels (and there was no soccer on network TV then, or if there was we didn't get it -- one of our channels was split between ABC and NBC, and we didn't get all of either network), the only sports were baseball, basketball and football. As culture-bound as anyplace in the USA. Occasionally I'd see something in Sports Illustrated about the NASL, but you couldn't really follow it. I remember an article about Kyle Rote, Jr., "America's first great soccer player", if you can believe that. We were made to play this funny little game in gym for a couple weeks a year, and I thought it was kind of cool. I was a senior in high school before some guy moved up from the bay area who had actually played the game. I had heard of Pele, but that was about it. The one thing I do remember is that Wide World of Sports would usually show excerpts from the FA Cup final every year -- I remember being so impressed by reports of crowds of 100,000, and the singing. To this day there is nothing in sports that moves me as much as hearing a football crowd in full voice, I wish to god we had that in MLS. And, I remember two names from that time -- Leeds and Arsenal, don't ask me why.

In 1974 my family took a package tour of Europe, and it happened to be during the WC finals. I was 17, and it was the coolest thing I had ever seen. All the games were on TV, but of course your room usually didn't have a TV, and you gathered in this common room with all these European businessmen to watch games -- I found out that French people really do say "Ooh la la!" when they get excited. I remember boarding a train for Dover, I think at King's Cross, and there were scads and scads of Scottish fans going over, all singing, dressed real cool, waving flags. It was awesome. Of course, we flew back to the states the day of the final, so I missed that.

That was about it for a while, as the NASL died out eventually, and there was still no coverage of the rest of the world in the states that the average sports fan would see. I think occasionally I saw "Soccer in Germany" on PBS. I knew of Cruyff and Beckenbauer, and eventually Maradona. But you couldn't really get regular enough info to support a team. In '86 I was living in Chicago, where we actually got spanish-language TV over the air (couldn't afford cable), so I watched as much of the finals in Mexico as I could. Hooked again, enough so that in '90 I was able to find somebody's house that had just the right cable system to get whatever channel broadcast the final game (one of Ted Turner's channels that was not widely distributed at the time, I think). No one else I knew was interested at all. Then, of course, we hosted in '94, MLS was founded, and the game finally had some presence in this country. The cable systems expanded, though it was only three years ago that I finally was able to get FSW. Last spring I switched to the DishNetwork, so I now have GolTV and even more pay-per-view options. For the last 4 or 5 years I've been a season-ticket holder for the Columbus Crew.

Then there was the internet. When teams first started broadcasting their games over the web they were all free. You could listen to all these premiership games, and the first year I listened to a variety. Prior to the '01-'02 season I decided I wanted to adopt a team to follow. I ruled out ManU immediately -- no one with a shred of self-respect could support the Yankees, right? I mean unless they were cursed to be born into it, and those people are without souls. Considered Liverpool, 'cause I'd heard Elvis was a fan and I'd read an interview with him on their website. I also considered Leeds, just 'cause I remembered the name. But I settled on Arsenal -- I'd always thought the name was cool, and I knew they had several players that I remembered from France '98. I honestly didn't take the time to check out where they had finished in recent seasons, though I knew they weren't bad. So I listened to their games, discovered BigSoccer, etc. I freely admit that it was an affectation. And lo and behold, they won the double that year (God I hope memory is not failing me on that).

But here's the part that's fascinating to me. Well before we'd clinched anything that year I was hooked. I actually care about a team that I have no earthly connection with, my spirits rise and fall with their fortunes, they're the first thing I look for news of each day (along with the Crew, my "local" club). Soccer has become the focus of my life -- club and nats games, my kids' games. It's what I enjoy more than just about anything else. For 40 years now I have lived and died with the San Francisco Giants, but when they ripped my heart out and stomped on the pieces two years ago (see, "The Meltdown in Mousetown" for you Brits) something truly died, and I just can't care about them that much anymore. It was as if, at the end of the movie version of "Fever Pitch", Arsenal had done just what Paul (wasn't that his name in the film?) expected and lost. So of course, no I'm not free of them. But there is a void there that Arsenal fills more and more. How I wish an opportunity would come to travel to London and see Highbury before they move! I don't know how I'll react when Arsenal's fortunes finally turn sour, as eventually they must. But I have a feeling that by that time it will be too late.

 

Good post mate, good to see a real fan on here. Especially like the last bit.

Easy Rick, I'm being nice...

 

Sorry for being so long-winded folks, but we just went through the time change here (does anyone else in the world do that?) and so I inadvertently was up at 6:30 a.m. and I had an extra hour on my hands.

Here's hoping I get the chance to share those pints with you one day Henrik!

 

Don't really support any particular club as such but as a booomy Futebol lover I've respected Arsenal since the establishment of the House of Wenger (though the Brady and Rix era was booomy 2).

 

Great post, Imposter.

Thanks for taking the time to describe what pre-94 WC America was like.

For all of us, whether you, me , fox point or Topcat (among others), we were all in the situation in the nothing years of the 70s and 80s. For an entire generation of us, we had to choose to follow soccer first, then came team allegiances.

Just wish I had more rep to give you...

 

I wouldn't bother Henrik, comme is a pedantic so and so and knows fully well what was meant, but any opportunity to disect peoples knowledge will be taken with relish.

 

I first heard of Arsenal as a young kid when some relatives in the UK gave me an Arsenal scarf. Then on a trip to Europe in 1998, I watched the FA Cup semis and final on television in London and was captivated by the way Arsenal played. Their style of play was what truly won me over and made me a fan, not only of Arsenal but of soccer in general. Also the World cup that summer and the arrival of FIFA 98 for Nintendo 64 conspired to really fuel my interest in both soccer and Arsenal. As Fox began showing more games and highlight shows i have been able to follow Arsenal more closely, and now follow almost every match either on tv or over the internet. Last year i made the pilgrimage to Highbury to watch the Chelsea match. It was fantastic. I can't wait to go again. The Wenger era has been great to watch as a new fan. Arsenal is a club with a great history that has truly brought English football into a new era. Its a class club, with class players, and a class manager. The way that Arsenal play total football with flair is sure to make many new fans for both Arsenal and the sport.

 

I supported Liverpool in the 80's but I realised things were going wrong there so I switched to Arsenal in 1989. How lucky was that?

 

I'm American, played soccer growing up and really only followed internationals since that's all you could really get here.

Became obsessed with Bergkamp after watching him emerge for Holland in the early 90s, then read Fever Pitch a few years later. I had vaguely known of Bergkamp's club associations with Ajax and Inter, but once I heard he had moved to the same Arsenal that Hornby loved in Fever Pitch (and once we actually could watch the EPL here in the States), I started catching games.

 

I'm going to be every "bandwagon" fan that you hardcore's hate. I began watching soccer during WC 02. It wasn't that bad. I began discussing the game with my then boss, who loaned me a tape of a recent ManU Arsenal game.

I still didn't know if I even cared enough to follow a team, until I watched he game. The guy that gave me the tape told me that ManU were the New York Yankees of soccer, that ruled them out. So that left Arsenal as the team to follow.

As an extra special reason to mick me: I also really liked the logo. Fast forward a year or so, my friends gets Fox Sports World on his cable system. We begin watching Arsenal games on TV, I buy Fever Pitch because I liked "High Fidelity" and "About a Boy" and here I am. A total newbie with a team I try to follow from 5000 miles away.

There are not many fans of the game amoung my friends, so when somebody, usually a foreign kid at the university, sees me in the Arsenal jersey, it is a great conversation starter.