You can't really make the same assessment for Napoli as you could for other "big/semi-big" clubs who get relegated etc. For some time the relationship with the fans and the management was degenerating. Now that the "old" club is gone, people are enthusiastic about the new beginning, even though that beginning is the lowest point we've had in our history. The only thing Napoli fans have ever expected is a team composed of players who bust their asses off. If they aren't very talented, so be it. We haven't had many talented sides throughout the majority of our history and yet our attendance figures in recent decades have always been significant. What we don't appreciate is being taken as fools by owners who send the club into ruin to save their own ass, and by players who come to Naples to get an early retirement. Had the players at least walked off the field with sweaty jerseys (but with the same results), the attendance would have been there. Sorry lad, you really need to investigate a little further before accusing us of being fair weather fans. Attendance figures are going to vary over time. If Reading were in the PL, wouldn't your attendance figures go up? Would that suddenly mean that Reading fans are nothing but fair weather fans? Although, truth be told, your post did remind me that attendance figures alone are not enough to define a fanbase as being fair weather or not, so in that regard we were both at least partially wrong. 1) Every team is going to have the dedicated fans that get season tickets no matter what. And there will always be the casual fans that only go to the stadium if the team is winning or if they simply feel like it. So where do you draw the line? By what percentage does attendance need to vary in order to define a fanbase as fair weather? By what factor does a team's form need to improve/worsen before making the determination that yes, at this point fair weather fans are coming onboard/bailing out? 2) People have other reasons for not going to the stadium besides the form of the team. Maybe they are just tired of the violence and disorder? Look, I can't even count how many Napoli fans I've known or been around. Not all of them go to the stadium, some of them seldom if ever did even when Maradona was there. Many of them were there with Maradona, as they were there in the days when Ravenna scored 4 goals at the San Paolo. But do you know how many "fair weather" Napoli fans I can think of off the top of my head? Two. That's right. Two. I'm talking about people that at one point you would have defined as "real fans." Two. How do the rest of them live the sport? They still support Napoli. Period. Some of them don't even watch Milan and Juve on Sky. They watch Napoli. Yes, because Napoli is the only C1 team carried on Sky. But of course we, like all clubs that were successful at least at some point of their history, have a certain amount of people who enjoy riding the bandwagon. When we were winning scudetti, the whole south loved us. You know, the more I think about it, the more these discussions about "fair weather fans" appear pointless. Kinda like the debate of who is a "real" fan vs. who isn't. Believe what you will.
celtic , i think there fans won an award not long ago. bilbao (from what i have heard) have very loyal and passionate supporters. fiorentina as well there fans never gave up on them, they had pretty good attendance numbers i think as well in the lower divisions.
Too many to list but here is who I think are the best. Leeds United, West Brom, Ferencvaros, Messina, Frankfurt, Kaiserslautern, Fiorentina, Legia, and Basel. I think people give to much respect to the fans of larger clubs when the smaller clubs usually are more loyal.
The most loyal Fans, wich Idiot wrote Dortmund??????? Loyal are Leipzig, with an attandance over 20,000 in the 11th. class, per game. St Pauli (Hamburg) att. 18.000 in the 4th class. Further I think it's Nottingham, Schalke (break all records, 38,000 in the 2nd division att. per game, highscore 72.000) and I think some english clubs. Dortmund is nothing else than a mode club. Dortmund can't do it cause at their time one league below their stadium was as a limit of 52.000. Dortmund is a small club in Germany, in Europe they've a name, in Germany they are nothing. E.g. Leverkusen, means nothing in the German league. Cologne, Frankfurt, Dresden and Leipzig have much bigger names and Fans that they ever have. The biggest in Germany are F.C. Bayern Muenchen - I hate them - and the F.C. Schalke 04 e.V zu Gelsenkirchen, both own more than 50% of all fans in Germany. But when I wrote this with Leipzig, they need 12 years to come back in 1 st. Division. Most of their fans will never see that (or do you believe they run the 3rd. and 2nd. Division in one year) but they support, and that is loyality.
Only in Italy? Are you joking? Italy generally has pathetic support of the lower league clubs. Germany (and the rest of Europe as a whole) has the advantage of ticket prices being very cheap. There are clubs in the English 3rd tier (League One) that charge 30 Euros a game. If that happened in Europe attendances would plummet.
Marseille St etienne PSG celtic manchester city newcastle liverpool dortmund most of turkish club napoli Milan not in special order even if i have special feeling with marseille
C'mon, the last 20 clubs or so mentioned are playing on a European level. Please, compare that to (the real) Wimbledon, Lok Leibzig or Napoli. In Bad times it showe whether you are a loyal fan, not if you play against Madrid, Milan, Manchester or Munich. There is no doubt, that almost every single of the above mentioned fan group is great and loyal, but be honest, Celtic, Dortmund and PSG are not facing a real hard time, are they? They are still in their first division, have (almost) enough money and most of them play European...!