You didn't just compare Celtic's Irish ties vs. Notre Dame did you? I must be reading your post wrong.
The Bad News Bears lose to the Yankees. My team is West Ham. I like Fulham because of the Yanks and Craven Cottage. It reminds me of Fenway Park or Wrigley Field. Oxford United are my "ancestral" team because my family tree's roots are in Oxfordshire. When I make it to England, I plan on visiting Upton Park and The Kassam Stadium.
yo lou holtz was a bad ass though...the way he yelled and pulled players across the field by face mask was classic. claaaasic. i loved notre dame in those days. The rocket was my boy.
Earlier in the thread..someone compared liking the celtics to liking the fighting irish...i know it was off subject..and my response was late..but thats what i was reffering too.
And while you're at it, Wikipedia proper ********ing English. This isn't the ********ing fart-can muffler forum.
Getting back to what this thread is purportedly all about, Bill Simmons of ESPN's Page 2 had a great article a while back about choosing an EPL team to support. The complete article is here (http://proxy.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/060719), but you need an ESPN subscription, so for those of you who don't have one, here are the highlights. Here were his criteria: He then ranked them as follows: 6. Chelsea 5. Arsenal 4. Man City 3. Newcastle 2. Liverpool 1. Tottenham More highlights in a minute...
As for me, I'm an American and disagree with Simmons. I support Chelsea based on my first trip to London in 1998. Prior to my trip, the only EPL teams that I had any knowledge of were Arsenal, ManU, and Liverpool and I definitely wanted to see an Arsenal match. Unfortunately, Arsenal's match was sold out, but someone told me about Chelsea, so I got tickets and got to see them face off against Coventry. To most, this might've been a crap match, but to me it was one of the most exciting things I'd ever been to. Chelsea won 3-0 (if I remember correctly) with 2 goals from Mark Nichols, and a brilliant goal on a pass that was dummied through Mark Hughes and banged in by Roberto DiMatteo. That day I decided that there real was "only one DiMatteo" and decided that Chelsea were my team, and there's been no looking back since. I've been fortunate that Chelsea have done so well in recent years, but even if they flounder, I'd be happy to support them and to wake up early to watch them on Fox Soccer Channel.
Like most people have already said just watch a couple of ELP matches. Or....do you have family in England? Just support whatever team they do..lol That's what ended up happening to me, most of my family live in Slough and Islington, London and are all mad Gooners. So I started watching Arsenal young and have just stuck with them. In all seriousness though, you need to watch a few matches before you can decide.
This seems like a thread that would be very heated. Correct me if Im wrong but I did not feel like reading every page. Most Americans are in this boat. Its a vicious cycle. We like soccer but we dont look within our country for a team to support, and I admit Im the same way. The MLS doesnt even get a giant fanbase from Americans so its a bad cycle of pretty much soccer not getting very far in this country which allows these ESPN assholes to downgrade the sport and assume no Americans like it. It's bullshit. Anyways Im a Liverpool supporter. Could I give you decent reasons why? No. But hey its fun to follow a team and players and all the news around it. Gotta love the passion of the EPL.
Thats what i did...got foxsoccer channel..after watching enough games..i picked arsenal(the world cup helped Henry is a beast on the pitch). But its weird..i have about 3 epl teams...i like arsenal,united...and the spurs...is "Beasley" on the spurs(i support the teams i call "black")?
I never caught the answer to what team do Gotti and bin Laden support? Anyways, I like Charlton Athletic because they have a good plan, even if temporarily derailed. Twenty years ago they didn't have a stadium, and when they returned it could only hold 8,000 fans, and now they have a 27,000-seater, and are looking to expand to 40,000+, which will make it bigger than Tottenham's. And if the Greenwich Council doesn't approve their development plans, a new stadium is not out of the picture. They have ambitions. And--they have a corner on a fan base from southeast London all the way to the sea, so they can pull support from all these communities, with Gillingham being the only club in their way--but they're not much of a threat for promotion to the EPL. Plus, Charlton have the City Learning Centre and do all these community charity things, further endearing themselves to fans, in the effort to win them back. Plus they have overseas academies in South Africa and China. Eventually they'll start bearing fruit. In the 1930s and 40s they were one of the most popular clubs in England, and I think they can return to a similar stature if they keep to their current long-range growth plan.
yeah but so does the Queen. I don't see how celebrity supporters are relevant at all. and nor is relegation, as Bluebirds rightly pointed out. Bill Simmons did a good job of chronicling the struggles of an American trying to settle on an EPL team, and any literate exposure in America is good exposure, but that doesn't mean that everyone should follow in Simmons' footsteps or use the same set of criterion that he used.