Last day of the English Premier League season today... championship is on the line for Chelsea, they need a better result than ManU to clinch. And Tottenham could still overtake Arsenal for 3rd, should be an exciting day of footie!
Champions League final, FA Cup final, it's all happening in the next few weeks...
World Cup is coming up in a month. Go USA! (Canada didn't make it so I cheer for our big brother to the south, even though y'all don't pay much attention)
Anyone?
jono
"They are actually paying me to race. What a concept."
-- Andrew Ranger talking about his NASCAR Canada team
For whatever reason, I've never really followed the various league play. When I do catch it on TV, I will watch it but I just don't pay attention to know stuff like mentioned above. However, I do plan to watch as much of the World Cup as I can. The intensity of those games is always incredible.
I for one am glad the first piece of the Man U/Chelsea/Arsenal/Liverpool cabal that's been at the top of the EPL is starting to crumble. Always good to see fresh blood. Tottenham is stepping it up and I think Man City is going to make a big surge in the coming years.
“I think some drivers must still think it’s Dan. They keep flipping me off.” - Dario Franchitti
For sure, all those top teams had trouble this year... champion's league was a mess for the EPL'ers. Very happy to see Tottenham up there! Although how did they manage to lose to Burnley today!?
Chelsea wins 8-0... :O Wow.
jono
Spurs fan here. Did not expect them to vault past Arsenal but I would have expected a better result than losing to Burnley. 4th place, Champions League berth, not bad though.Originally Posted by jonovision_man
Chelsea - deserved winners this year.
Looking forward to June 11th.
Would love to follow more closely than I do. try to keep track of all the different competitions that are going on between Champions League, Cups, Premiership Championship, etc - but it gets confusing.
Will get geared up for World Cup. Looking forward.
Once FC Dallas moved from the Cotton Bowl (5 mins from my house), to Pizza Hut Park in Frisco (1 hour+), I've gone to less games.
Indiana University soccer I follow most closely.
Closet "Hearts of Midlothian" fan as well.
"Now, for some of you it doesn't matter. You were born rich and your going to stay rich. But here's my advice to the rest of you: Take dead aim on the rich boys. Get them in the crosshairs and take them down." -- Edward Blume
I mostly just keep an eye on EPL and Champion's League. The odd other game when someone hypes it up for me.
Catch the odd MLS game, but hard to get tix for Toronto FC! It's become the hottest thing in town.
You're already out of the closet. A few years back you mentioned Alan Shearer in a throwball, I mean US football, thread so we all knew the charade was over.
I just watched my first English Premier League match this morning and found it extremely compelling. I've been watching the World Cup over the years but never got into MLS. I kept hearing how much better the EPL is than MLS. So, I decided a couple of weeks ago that I would choose an EPL team and follow it for a season and see if I enjoy it.
Choosing a team was tough. I wanted a team that I could realistically go see a match every couple of years in person. That pretty much limited me to London, Manchester, and possibly Liverpool as I'm over there every few years anyway. I ruled out Manchester United immediately since I didn't want to jump on a bandwagon of the EPL equivalent of the New York Yankees or the New England Patriots. They easily have the biggest following in the states and I thought it wouldn't be as enjoyable. On the other hand, I didn't want a team that would be in danger of being relegated. If I lived in the UK, this wouldn't be an issue but it would very difficult to find a team on television here in the states in a lower division. So that ruled out Fulham and the Queens Park Rangers. Manchester City seemed like the New York Mets to me, so I decided against them.
I finally narrowed it down to Liverpool, Tottenham, Arsenal and Chelsea. After doing a lot of reading on those four clubs, I went with Arsenal. I loved their logo and could see myself wearing their jerseys. I also loved the fact that their fans are called "gooners".
I had to wait a couple of weeks for the international break to be over with, but tuned in for my first game this morning (Arsenal vs. Swansea City). Right away I was riveted. Maybe it was because it was all new to me, but I found it to be anything but boring. I likened it to a Hitchcock film where the suspense of the possibility of violence is more entertaining than the violent act itself. Yes, soccer is low scoring, but when a goal means so much more than scoring a basket in the NBA or a touchdown in the NFL it really keeps you on the edge of your seat. Having watched many World Cup matches I knew this, but now I actually have a team to follow and it really makes a difference as opposed to being a casual observer who doesn't care so much about who wins.
A couple of other quick observations:
- The fact that they go nearly 50 minutes without a commercial break is really nice. The other night when I was watching the Packers vs. Saints, it seemed like there were commercial breaks every 10 minutes or so.
- The fan enthusiasm is awesome. I can't wait to get over to London to see a match.
- The level of play in the EPL is certainly better than what I've seen in the handful of MLS games I've watched.
- I love the system of promotion and relegation. I wish we had this in all of the U.S. Sports leagues too. I read where FIFA was pushing MLS towards this, but so far they've rejected it.
Arsenal won 1-0, but even with only 1 score in 97 minutes of play, I found it much more entertaining than an NBA game. This is going to make for some great entertainment in the months ahead with the season just barely underway.
Maybe you could have supported the current League Cup holders?
"An emphasis was placed on drivers with road racing backgrounds which meant drivers from open wheel, oval track racing were at a disadvantage. That led Tony George to create the IRL." -Indy Review 1996
Welcome aboard! You're analogy to a Hitchcock film is spot on. As you watch more games, you will develop this sense of awareness, a moment of clarity, where you sense something exciting is going to happen. The crowd can sense it too so that moment just builds...it's pretty cool.
As a newly adopted Arsenal fan, you will really enjoy the "derby" games with next door neighbor (literally cross street) and rival Tottenham (Spurs) - whom I support.
If you're watching Fox Soccer channel, for a change of pace, try and catch an Italian league game (Serie A - Italy's top flight equivalent to the EPL). It's football but played at a different pace/style to the English game.
I might have considered it but it would be very difficult to watch the matches from here in the States. Birmingham is on my list of cities to visit someday. I've been to London, Manchester, Bristol, Bradford, Wolverhampton, Nottingham and Sheffield but somehow have never been to Birmingham.
I'm looking forward to be able to pick up things like that. How long have you been following the Premier League?
Yeah, the fans from both teams really hate each other. I found it interesting that the stadiums are only a little over 3 miles apart. The one drawback I saw to Arsenal was the fact that they left the classic Highbury for a state-of-the art Emirates. But then I read that Anfield may be soon be gone and they are saying the same thing about White Hart Lane. It looks the classic fields are starting to be phased out.As a newly adopted Arsenal fan, you will really enjoy the "derby" games with next door neighbor (literally cross street) and rival Tottenham (Spurs) - whom I support.
I certainly will. Do a lot of fans watch the Champions League matches during the week or do most of them just pay attention to the weekend games?If you're watching Fox Soccer channel, for a change of pace, try and catch an Italian league game (Serie A - Italy's top flight equivalent to the EPL). It's football but played at a different pace/style to the English game.
My wife is Mexican, so we had always followed the World Cup. When Manchester United signed Javier "Chicharito" Hernandez from Mexico, I started following the EPL, and I was hooked, too, for many of the same reasons you give. I love it! I love the fact that there are all of these different competitions and knockout tournaments. Then there's the Champions League, where the best of England go up against the best of Spain, Italy, France, and Germany, etc. A bonus of upgrading to get Versus for the Indycar races is that I also get Fox Soccer and the Champions League.
As far as being a fan of Arsenal, I have only watched in earnest for one year, but I already know this, Arsenal play beautiful soccer, but they will break your heart.
Here's an example from last year, and a happy memory for Ensign14:
El Grillo Cantor
I am a fan of Everton. They've had success over the years, but they're not Man U or any of the other "popular" teams. Plus our own Tim Howard is their goalkeeper, and Landon Donovan was on loan from the LA Galaxy two years ago.
Since my kid doesn't play for any of these teams I won't be watching.
"Ride The Barrel & Get Pitted... So Pitted."
How's the season going?
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"In the land of freedom we are held hostage by the tyranny of political correctness...If we speak..we say it the wrong way; if we do not speak we are cowards…."
One of the happiest days was in late Nov 2005 when my cable provider added Fox Soccer Channel. I've been regularly viewing since then, but prior to that I would catch the occasional EPL game on pay per view - probably since 1999-2000. I remember when Leeds was challenging for the EPL title - Harry Kewell & Mark Viduka days
A lot of people will watch the Champions League matches, especially as the tournament progresses into the latter stages. There is also the Europa League - which could be called Champions League Lite - which lets "best of the rest" from each domestic league compete. The interesting part about the Europa League is that some of the teams eliminated from the Champions League will filter into the Europa stages so you can get a big team on occasion who may have flubbed the Champions League qualifiers.
Probably as good a time as any to explain a bit about football...
You don't choose your club. Your club chooses you. It's a local thing, a family thing. My first Blues game came in 1977. I was four. Went with my dad and grandad. That's what it's like for a smaller club.
Every club has its history. Its legends. No matter how big. With 92 in the League, and a pyramid of hundreds supporting it - each year, two in, two out - there are thousands of each. Proud Preston North End, now a third tier club, inaugural League champions back in 1889, unbeaten, and Cup winners. Lowly Bury were such a force in the 1900s that their 6-0 Cup Final win in 1903 is still the record. Rochdale with their 40 year sojourn in the bottom division, finally broken last year. Crewe Alexandra and its youth policy. Northampton Town going up three divisions and back down them again in a decade. Everyone has a soft spot for Hartlepool United; nobody has a soft spot for Leeds United. The legends of Stan Matthews, Skinner Normanton, Robin Friday, John Trollope, Willie Gallacher. They all mean something to someone.
92 clubs but only 6 can now have a realistic chance of winning something. When I started going there were maybe 40 that thought, with a fair wind, they might sneak a Cup; there was nothing stopping anyone coming from nowhere to win a title. Derby, Nottingham Forest, Ipswich all won unexpected titles a few years after being in the third tier; QPR and Norwich nearly followed. The city of Nottingham has more European Cups than the whole of France and Europe east of the Oder-Neisse combined.
We feel it all. It's in our DNA. 150 years in the case of Notts County; not much less for some other clubs. You talk about breaking your heart. Ask a Bluenose about Fulham 1975 and be prepared to see tears. Ask an older Bluenose about the 1956 Cup Final and you'll see the same. I doubt there are many who remember the 1931 Cup Final but you only need to glance at the reports to see how we were screwed out of that one. Going into last season we had been in 9 FA Cup semi-finals and not won a single Cup. 4 League Cup semis and only a solitary success when nobody cared about the tournament (the top 11 clubs didn't enter). Even three European semis and no wins. The gypsy's curse on St Andrews was that we would come close to success but never reach it. The League was always beyond us, never higher than 6th. Our first-ever League season summed it up; 1893, winners of the Second Division, but not promoted after a play-off. No champion of that division has been denied promotion since. We made it up next year though. And then got relegated. A depressing pattern. No team in Europe has bounced between the top two divisions more. One in four seasons sees us go up or down...
In my supporting life I have seen humiliation on humiliation. 5-0 defeat by our hated rivals. SIX-nil defeat by our hated rivals. Even little Walsall, who would like to be our rivals, went nap against us once. Our hated rivals have won everything in the game, indeed every other Midlands team bar the Saddlers had won something in the last 45 years. I've seen home defeats in the Cup by non-league teams. Twice. I've seen our record home defeat; I've seen our record home defeat get beaten...I've seen our two longest winless runs, 15 and 17 games. I'd even seen us be the first team to lose a major Cup final on penalties. Screwed out of it by an appalling decision not to give us a penalty in extra time. Gypsy's curse.
Then came the run in the League Cup last season. Freak draws, home in every round to weak teams. Even then we needed penalties to get past Brentford (pub on every corner of the ground, where Julius Caesar is reputed to have invented the game by kicking a Briton's head). In the quarters we overcame rubbish refereeing to get past our hated rivals. The derided six foot eight Nikola Zigic did eff all all match. In the 85th minute the ball came to him. All he had to do was hit it. Stupid idiot fell over. He managed to scuff away a stupid, pointless, pathetic token effort of a shot. Which deflected off a defender and up and over Brad Friedel. Greatest goal in the club's history. In the semis we came from three down to beat West Ham. We hadn't come from three down in fifty years. We were in the final.
And 8-1 outsiders. We had NO chance. The council didn't bother making preparations for a parade. The only pre-match debate in the papers was whether the injured Fabregas would be allowed to collect the trophy. Arsenal's bench was worth more than our entire squad. But going to Wembley in the teeming rain was a party atmosphere. We were going to ENJOY it. Regardless. The Gooners were not. This was step one of the Quadruple. It was another trip up the road. There was no occasion for them.
And then came the rallying cries. Wembley allowed each team to put up a pre-match video. Arsenal's was boastful, condescending, domineering. And boring. Even their own fans could not do much with it.
Then came ours.
We had no triumphs about which to boast. We only had us.
It looks cheesy now. But at Wembley with 40,000 Bluenoses it was magnificent. The roar at the end caused earthquakes. For the first time I thought "we can DO this."
And we did.
Six years without a trophy for Arsenal? Try 136 years. When that goal went in I was screaming something, but I don't know what it was, I couldn't hear myself. The remaining three minutes saw me standing with hand clamped over mouth. I couldn't believe it, I didn't dare to breathe. The generations before us had never seen this. Blues. At Wembley. WINNING a TROPHY. At the whistle there were men in their eighties in tears. I still have no idea who the bloke was who hugged me and anyone else he could grab. I can't have been the only one thinking back to our forefathers, our great-grandparents, the ones who had started the whole tradition, the decades of utter failure that they had endured and passed on to us. This was, without doubt, the greatest single moment in the whole of that 136 years. The apotheosis. It is almost certainly the only time in my life I will see my team, the one I've seen maybe a eight hundred times, win a major trophy. It was the sort of thing you didn't even dare to dream. For those brief moments we were the king of the world.
And, in typical Blues fashion, we got relegated three months later. Nobody was surprised.
Thanks Ensign. I think nothing else even comes close here.
I am amazed at the sheer number of teams there are in a country the size of England. I know there are 92 professional teams in the Premier League, Championship, League 1, and League 2.
My question is about Conference national and Conference North and South. Are these professional teams, too? That's another 68 teams that are at least semi professional I would guess, but then you read that 825 teams entered the FA Cup. I am just trying to get a grasp of how big football is over there and to what degree or level are they professionals.
I guess you popped some bubbles when they won!
If this was college football over here, the announcer would definitely be called a "homer".
The commentary is taken from the local radio station BRMB, Tom Ross is indeed a Bluenose through and through. The reference to bubbles by the way is because West Ham's club song is "I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles". (Ours is the Harry Lauder song "Keep Right On To The End Of The Road", adopted during the FA Cup run in 1956 because Alex Govan, the right-winger, was singing it on the way to the semi-final and the fans around the coach heard it. Hence the initials KRO often being appended to posts on the club forum, usually coupled with SOTV, which refers to our rivals up the road...)
As for professionalism? All 92 League clubs are fully professional and most of the Conference clubs are as well. Until the mid 1980s there was no automatic entry into the League; an aspirational non-league club had to seek election, which meant a League club had to be voted out. Given that the voters were all League members, there was very much a closed shop. You had to be a spectacularly bad side (Bradford Park Avenue, bottom for four consecutive seasons) or an unpopular one (Gateshead, a very long drive for most clubs to play in front of crowds of barely 1,000) to be voted out. So there wasn't much point. In 1986 though automatic promotion was brought in, so over time more and more Conference sides have gone pro. There are only half-a-dozen in the top non-league division that remain part-time. Most of the Conf North and South teams pay players a decent coin for turning out but not enough to live on.
With 92 League clubs, there is nobody in England more than 20 miles from a League club, apart from those at the tip of Cornwall who have a long journey to Plymouth (Cornwall is the only county never to have had a League team, rugby is the game there, they have a second tier rugby team), and even then they may have one soon; Truro City in Conference South have big plans for a new stadium to be shared with the Pirates rugby team. Club football generates astonishing local loyalty. There are no franchises in football, save for three very special circumstances; Arsenal moving from south to north London in the 1900s, when there was only 1 London team in the League; South Shields moving to Gateshead in the 1920s, a move of a few miles; and Wimbledon moving to Milton Keynes about ten years ago, an absolute abomination that was against the League's wishes but ordered by an arbitration panel who said that nobody else should ever be allowed to move in the same way. I suppose the equivalent of Dodgers moving to LA would be Newcastle - historically successful, big team, lacking in recent glories - being moved to London. Should the current owner propose that, he would, I have no doubt, be assassinated. And they'd never find a jury to convict. The Wimbledon fans incidentally formed a new club and promoted their way back up the Pyramid, and this year kicked off back in the Football League...
To give some idea of the popularity of football, the average fourth tier team gets around 4,000 per match. England's population is a sixth of the United States'. Could the 80th best baseball team get 20,000+ per game?
You'd have to compare it to American Football...and if you did that, then "yes", between college and pros, you would have 80 teams that average over 20k per game....
All 32 NFL (pro) team average at least 40k, with Dallas highest at 87,047, down to Oakland at lowest at 46,431.
Then, add in NCAA Division 1. You have 94 teams that average over 20k.
There's even 3 Divison 2 teams that average over 20k.
So basically, you have 129 American football teams that average over 20k per game.
But don't college and pros duplicate support? Someone who watches Liverpool, say, is not going to watch Tranmere in a lower division, and vice versa.
OK. Throw out the pros. There's 97 college teams that draw over 20k.
Thanks Ensign! That was what I wanted to know. I guess the semi-professionalism extends even further down the pyramid, but certainly the wages would not be enough to live on.
As far as baseball goes, there are 30 teams each in the major leagues, AAA, AA, and A, (there are also rookie leagues, and several other independent leagues, so there are more teams than that.), so team 80 would be a AA side. If you look at a list of their stadiums, the capacities are between 6-10,000, so no no one would average 20,000.
Also, the more I see of the European system of organization in regards to professional leagues, the more I prefer it to our mess and scandals of the college system.
I just looked them up, there are some astonishing averages, Michigan at over 100,000, it's difficult enough to get a stadium that allows that many to see everything. The main difference between the college games and Football League games is the sheer number of the latter; each tier 4 team has 23 home games per season. And many will be comparatively meaningless - a 15th place team will have nothing to play for in the last few weeks.
I've no idea however how to compare travel for games in general. Obviously everyone is closer in England, but it's also more convoluted transport-wise. Blues still play in the middle of the city...parking is a mare.
Really? I thought QPR, Fulham, and Tottenham all go back to the late 19th century?
Glad to see support for the beautiful game here.
Tottenham Hotspur has been my team for a while now. When Sheringham went to Man Utd in 1997, so did I (I was 9 at the time). Briefly. I found myself cheering for Spurs against the Red Devils, and that's when I went back.
The derby with Arsenal is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, for sheer excitement. I went looney when Aaron Lennon scored the equalizer in the 94th at the Emirates, the cherry on top in a 4-4 thriller. 11 goals were scored in the two matches last year.
The days of Tim Sherwood and Jurgen Klinsmann. Gazza, Lineker, Hoddle, and of course Jimmy Greaves.
There have been bad days too - Carlos Vega, and Sergei Rebrov. Awful players. Hell the 5-1 loss at home to Man City was painful.
Under 'Arry, I've been entertained by the philosophy of "You'll score 3? Ha. We'll score 4" to no end. And now with Adebayor partnering Defoe up front, there's a good chance I'll be seeing more of it. Bale, Van der Vaart and Modric make a fantastic midfield, but time after time they were let down up front (looking at you Crouch).
While my local club was Norwich City, I could never really get into them. Probably because the kids that were Canaries fans were complete a**holes. I'm glad to see them up again, but they're a revolving door team - in one year and out the other. I will be pleasantly surprised if they are higher than 16th going into spring.
Now I'm living in Portland, and the Timbers Army know how to support a team. The atmosphere is fantastic, even if the team is new (and slightly above average on the best of days). Great to see MLS on the rise, and the new NBC deal will help.
They do and none of them were in the League until after Arsenal's move. They were all part of the Southern League, which at the time was very strong. When the League was founded, in 1888, professionalism had just started. The southern clubs were largely amateur because they were wealthier in themselves and didn't need the money. The northern clubs relied on paying players. So there were no teams further south than West Bromwich Albion, as the southern amateurs refused to join in. Already though the professional clubs were stronger, so southern clubs either went pro or faded into insignificance (hence teams like Old Etonians and Clapham Rovers, who had won the Cup, pretty much vanished).
As they couldn't join the League, in 1894 southern clubs formed the Southern League. Spurs won the Cup as a Southern League team in 1901. Gradually the Southern League teams were admitted one by one to the League, and after World War 1 practically the whole of the Southern League 1st Division was admitted as League Division 3.
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