When Donkeys Fly: Michael Bradley at Chievo, pt 1 [R]

Yeah. There are accommodations made for non-Italians.

 

Only because I know some of you were wondering:
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50xynq4xmCw"]Original Batmanning Video - YouTube[/ame]

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRHnTFesv7c"]Planking Craze - YouTube[/ame]

 

Keep in mind that Chievo is actually a small suburb of Verona with less than 4 thousand inhabitants.

It's amazing that they're even in Serie A at all.

 

Come on, that's absurd. It's still part of the Verona metro area. And it's the only team in that metro area that is in the Serie A. They are less than four miles apart. The other team from Verona is Serie B.

You could just have easily said it's amazing that Bridgeview, Illinois has an MLS team with only 16k people, Harrison, NJ with 13k, or Orchard Park, NY has an NFL team with only 29k.

And those aren't even proper examples. It's more like if you said that the Chicago Bears belonged to the Near South Side alone because that's the area of the city where Soldier Field is.

Chievo is a frazione, not really a separate entity when you look at the big picture.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frazione

/soapbox

 

So if it's so normal then why don't you see any other teams in Serie A that represent a frazione of a city? The fact is that Chievo is the first parochial club to ever be promoted to Serie A.

We are also talking about a tiny club with almost no fans that, in the post-war years, has managed to climb from a regional league at the bottom of the Italian soccer hierarchy all the way to the top division.

It's not for nothing that all of Italy was considering it as something exceptional when they won promotion several years ago.

 

So, their fans consist of people only from Chievo, then? They don't receive any support from the rest of Verona? Just because they were small once, or started out as a small club doesn't mean that they still are now, obviously. Manchester United started out as the team of a department of a railroad depot. Not even the entire depot itself, but just one if it's departments. AC Milan was founded by a couple of British expats. It seems most of the current Serie A clubs were.

I'm not saying that it's not noteworthy that Chievo has achieved this level of success. But I don't see it as being as amazing or as unbelievable as you.

 

This Nielsen Poll is from 2008. I can't really speak for its validity other than to say that, at a glance, it looks about right. Of the 20 Serie A teams when this poll was conducted Chievo Verona had the smallest fan base with 4,800 fans... Nationwide...

 

All that is an extrapolation from a sample. The very first line of the article says that the data might be suspect. They did some kind of survey and went from there.

One of the commenters mentions that Chievo has 8000 subscribers. Another commenter mentions that, "The subsequent numbers then I truly seem too pulled downward: 4800 Chievo fans?!? Verona has more than 700 thousand inhabitants, less than 1% actually cheering the team in Serie A?"

Translation care of google.

 

I would imagine that the questions were along the lines of...

• Are you a soccer fan?
• If you answered yes... What is your favorite team?

And then I'm sure that most Verona residents who answered yes to the first question probably chose either Hellas, Barcelona or one of the Big 3 (Inter, Juve or AC Milan) as their favorite team. I would imagine that, if fans were asked something like "what are your 3 favorite soccer teams?" they would have gotten a much higher number as I am sure there are many Italians with a soft spot for little Chievo as they are the classic underdog story and that sells anywhere.

 

I'll be a fan! Their crest is sweet.

 

I was actually surprised that they have an English version of their official website but, as I mentioned way earlier in this thread, the US base in Vicenza is right around the corner. Hopefully there is some sort of effort there to get groups together to travel to home matches and support the kid.

 

Here is a good article about Chievo's promotion to Serie A back in 2001 written by Tim Parks, a British ex-pat living in Verona (who also happens to be a Hellas Verona supporter).

The mouse that roared

 

Tim Parks lived (lives?) in Verona and is actually one of my favorite living writers. He loves Italy in spite of, and even because of, its faults. He has a great writing style and even his historical stuff (Medici Money, for example) is very entertaining.

If any of you follow English football but are not really well-versed in the Italian game (and want to be) I thought that The Italian Job (by Gianluca Vialli and Gabriele Marcotti) was an excellent read and it really opened my eyes (as I don't watch the English game) to the differences in footballing cultures between England and Italy. It's available on Amazon.

 

I'm just going to say it. That base has really been a disappointment for us compared to the troops stationed in Germany.

 

We have prettier girls (and MUCH better food) than Germany. They're busy.

 

Busy or not, we aren't seeing the results.

 

Haha! Absolutely this.

 

According to Google Maps it's only 60 kilometers from Vicenza to Verona (city-center to city-center).

 

Great article.

 

That article's what Giants fans thought of the Jets for years.

Still do,actually.


"Stupid Fireman guy with his hat-get a real team!!!"

 

Except Jets fans are getting boosted by bandwagoners/gloryhunters now.

 

I was trying to be nice,but yeah remember how many fake fans they had when Namath was there?

 

Obviously, busy with the food...

 

would you go and watch a game in cagliari stadium or siena or chievo.i mean chievo stadium is so far away from pitch that you have to bring a binoculars to watch the game on opposite side where you are