Football supporters. Can someone please explain...

[WildRosie]

I'm not a sports fan so I'm on the outside looking in, in wonderment. How does a person become a supporter/fan of a football club for which they have no plausible connection ? At my workplace, the local club is a Premier League side and I can count on one hand the number of fans among my colleagues. The other football fans support clubs such as Liverpool, Manchester City and United and Newcastle United. Yet, they are all locally raised and resident. One oddity is a chap who does support the local Premier League side but also has a Glasgow Rangers tattoo - he is not Scottish! Whenever I've genuinely enquired as to their support choices, I've received some peculiar answers, such as who won the FA Cup on the day they were born or the town where they first got their leg over. I kind of understand familial connections - my nephew was born in Middlesex yet supports his Dad's local side, i.e where he was born. One chap I've known for about a decade has supported four different Premier League sides in that time!

The explanation may be a lot more simple - glory supporters, associating themselves with a fashionable, successful club for their own self-validation. I wouldn't be so bold as to suggest this in person to these people - I have to work with them, after all - plus no one would be likely to admit it!

You've pretty much hit the nail on the head.

For a lot of people it'll be who their parents/grandparents support, or who was a really good team when they were a child, or a town/city they've lived in for a while etc.

When I was younger - I supported West Bromwich Albion for the only reason I watched a quiz show and thought one of the players was lovely- I gravitated their name over my books - had posters - they were my team……..I could not have found West Brom on a map- never sure where it was. They were my childhood team but I developed other interests and lost interest. Several years later met my husband who was football mad, we had 3 sons and we live in his home town. They and his family all support Wolves as I have learned to love…..I keep quiet about my first love - now I know where it is- .

@CalamityGladys oh that would be a brave admission 😂😂 friend of mine was an Albion season ticket holder. Her boyfriend was a wolves season ticket holder. They never discussed football 😂😂

My husband supports Liverpool despite never having lived there or having any real connection to it, simply because they played in the first ever football game he was taken to as a child.

DH is also a wolves fan. No connection don't live near either.
His family support man utd.
His cousin on his father's side played for Man city.
The reason is the local sports shop only had a wolves kit and his dad didn't want to disappoint him
not buying a kit.
Now our Ds and family, DD and 2 of her children support wolves.
Dgs has persuaded some of his friends to also support wolves.

I'm a football fan, and I don't know about other teams but a lot of people who sit near me have done for years. They travel from all over the UK and Ireland, a lot of them have said its family tradition, a lot of a certain generation started supporting United after the Munich Air Disaster and that has been passed on. And of course there are a lot of glory supporters (from back when we were good 😂).
For me, United are my local team my uncle started taking me back when I was about 5. I know nothing else.

The guy who has supported 4 different teams though, you can slate him all you like. In the world of football, you don't swap allegiances and nothing you said to him would be out of order. I would class him as the lowest of the low and would tell him so on a daily basis

My husband supports arsenal, when he went to boarding school at eight he was given an arsenal bag as a present at a party and that started him off.

Not football, but there weren’t any decent rugby union clubs near me, so I ended up following one that was decent and not miles and miles away, Tigers.

Somewhat off topic, and not really a football fan at all, but I’ve always believed that you should only be able to play on a football team if you were born in, lived in, or have a clear connection to that city or region - it would encourage teams to invest in local youth talent and facilities; create a real sense of belonging and pride from local fans for their team; and ultimately make football a lot more interesting than it is now, where essentially the best teams are generally just those with the most cash to sign the best players from wherever in the world.

Obviously suspect there are all kinds of laws about anti-discrimination and the like which are the reason this can never be the case.

For me its down to family..Great grandad.. grandad..uncle..nan..mum,cousins so passed down a lot lol.

But guess others where they live, what team they like the look of and feel a connection to? Or when younger which one is doing well sometimes

you should only be able to play on a football team if you were born in, lived in, or have a clear connection to that city or region

But then places with smaller populations would always be at disadvantage as they would have a much smaller pool of potential talent to draw on, and the big city teams would always dominate.

My DH supports the team that was pretty local to him and won the FA cup when he was 7.

Our DC, who were raised right by the stadium of the biggest enemies of DHs team, had no choice but to support DHs team. So they might seem odd to you as it had nothing to do with where they lived, but since he was buying the tickets, the shirts etc etc he determined it!

@ComtesseDeSpair

Somewhat off topic, and not really a football fan at all, but I’ve always believed that you should only be able to play on a football team if you were born in, lived in, or have a clear connection to that city or region - it would encourage teams to invest in local youth talent and facilities; create a real sense of belonging and pride from local fans for their team; and ultimately make football a lot more interesting than it is now, where essentially the best teams are generally just those with the most cash to sign the best players from wherever in the world.

Obviously suspect there are all kinds of laws about anti-discrimination and the like which are the reason this can never be the case.

But then all the teams would be crap, investing at youth level still only develops the oustanding players, you can’t polish a turd.

It also means if you lived somewhere without a team you would never be able to play that sport. I used to play professionally fulltime (not football), the nearest team to me was crap, if I had played there I wouldn’t have had a professional career and probably wouldn’t have continued playing at all. It would also mean when I moved to London I wouldn’t have been allowed to play at all until I had lived here long enough to have ‘links’ and by that time my peak would have been missed.

It's a peculiar business and I suspect the actual sport comes a distant second place to the sense of belonging to a fashionable club, in spite of the armchair referees and managers I have to put up with, shouting abuse and directions at the television.

One of my colleagues is a Liverpool supporter and wants everyone to know it, even though he has no connection to the city. He takes the Hillsborough disaster personally even though he was barely a year old at the time and wasn't even there. And he is very vocal about his contempt for the local Premier League side, even though he is a native. Bizarre.

I work with someone who was taken to see his local team as a child and liked the away side better and has supported them every since (40+ years). I still support the team 5 year old me's best friend supported. He was a Boy and so knew about Boy things like football!

My eldest DC supports our local team and DH has adopted them late in life (he's Scottish and we live in England.)

It can all be a bit random

You’re right, I’m sure there are all kinds of reasons why football isn’t played the way I think it should be It just seems a bit sad and empty that you can have Premier League teams supposedly representing the city they’re named after, sometimes with no players with any real connection to the UK, let alone that city - when originally, football was a game based around community links. Arsenal, for example, was originally for workers from the Royal Arsenal mountains foundry in Woolwich - I just imagine it would have been an entirely different atmosphere as a supporter to go and watch young men play a game and know you’d see them out and about in the community. Though obviously this was before football became a professional and money making sport, so totally dead in the water as a concept.

My son (10) began supporting Liverpool last year. His friends at school did so he did too.

My DH is not into football but has a colleague at work who supports Liverpool and has a ds the same age as ours.

So it came about that both dh and ds are members of LFC and are waiting to get tickets for their first matches.

I’m a Man Utd season ticket holder, living in the West Midlands. I’ve supported them since a boyfriend took me to a match in 1985 and I’ve been going ever since. I now go with my 21 year old son, he first started going when he was a toddler. My husband and our older son have no interest in football.

Wolves are my local team and before my first time at United I’d been to the Moulineux a number of times with Wolves supporting family members but never felt a connection. It’s assumed around here that you’ll support Wolves and I’ve always been a bit rebellious.

People choose a club they like as children and yes, it's likely to be one that's successful at that time. You can age a supporter by their club. Liverpool fans were children of the 80s, Man U fans children of the 90s.

It is glory seeking, but it's from very early Iin their childhood, not something to hold against them now. Once you've chosen your club you're stuck with it no matter what!

It's also largely children who had no prospect of actually being taken to football as children. If they had it would have been to a local club, but these "children" saw all their early football on TV.

There is also quite a tradition of passing down football support. I follow my DDad'cs (spectacularly unsuccessful!) Club although I've never lived near byf

My dad supports Sheffield Wednesday even though we’re from Birmingham. When he was a teen his favourite footballer was Chris Waddle and at the time he played for Sheffield Wednesday so he chose to support them instead of West Brom like the rest of his family. Of his 3 children (who all still live in the midlands) 2 of us support Sheffield Wednesday, my DC also support Sheffield Wednesday. Dsis supports West Brom as our grandparents would take her to the matches.

Another of my colleagues is from a small town near Wolverhampton and is a WW supporter - perfectly fair and reasonable. Someone else who lives locally but was born in a mining town a few miles away supports Newcastle United, a hundred odd miles away. There's another who, again, is local and has never been able to justify his Spurs season ticket to anyone but himself.

I think, with Liverpool, there's always been a certain cache surrounding the club. When I was growing up in the 1970s, it was by far the most popular club in my primary school. I'd have been amazed if any of their young and distant followers could have pointed to Liverpool on a map. They were just a good club and I guess that was all that mattered.

OP you make it sound like there's something wrong with following success. How spectacularly British

The biggest English clubs have fans all over the world.

I'm a football fan (my username is a massive giveaway)😂😂
My dad was a Celtic Supporter as are my brothers, DH they are all season ticket holders.
DH has travelled everywhere supporting Celtic.
Growing up in Glasgow there was only one team ever to support Celtic FC😉😉
HH

Following success is all well and good provided there is loyalty too. I give you the example of the man who is on to his fourth Premier League side in ten years. He is only interested in the goal tally of his latest flame and doesn't give a bugger where the club is from. We're up north and one of his four was Aston Villa.

I take the point about the big English clubs having worldwide support. A Glaswegian chap I used to work with had no time for Scottish football but was a massive fan of the local PL club. Said club has always had significant followings in Ireland and Scandinavia. Like I said, bizarre.

Derby born here so a ram through and through.

DH is a Chelsea fan and they are actually the closest team to where he was born so I will forgive him that.

DD1 had a crush on Steven Gerrard when she was 6 and has followed Liverpool ever since. At that age she had no idea about football and her love for the sport has grown over the years.

I support the team my dad supports because it was where he was born. It’s an hour and a half away. We have season tickets but he doesn’t go much anymore though I go to all the games.

Out of our 4 dc two support my team , one supports whoever is top of the league as she doesn’t have a clue about football and ds supports the same as dh which is our local PL team.
When I was growing up abroad I also supported Man U ( as a pp said children of the 90s) as it was almost impossible to see any of my teams games.