I’ll admit it. I’ve been one of the soccer holdouts. I was one of those stubborn guys who would not even give soccer the time of day and was not about to listen to my friends about the game. Finally, after years of harassment and bombardment from fellow sports fans about picking up soccer, I decided this year would be the year I tried soccer one last time and if it didn’t stick, I was done with soccer for good. I figured that since I got back into baseball by picking a team and following them, maybe if I picked a team, I could finally get into soccer.
Now that I was going to pick a team, I had to make a couple decisions. Was I going to stay strictly international and cheer for the US National Team? Well, cheering for the National team eliminates having meaningful games to cheer for in non-Olympic or non-World Cup years. Should I pick up an MLS team? There really isn’t a team close to Nashville yet and MLS is still viewed as a sort of soccer minor league on the world stage. While Nashville FC is growing, they are still growing. With the US National Team and MLS out, a foreign league team was my best option, but which country’s league would be the best?
I wanted to pick a league I could actual watch on a regular basis. I don’t have any special sports packages, so I was left to Germany’s Bundesliga, Mexico’s Liga MX, or England’s Premier League and FA Cup. When I got to this level, the choice was pretty easy. Last year, I made my first international trip to help teach an American sports camp in the United Kingdom. As we were teaching the kids basketball, baseball, and American football in apparel of our favorite teams, they would all be in the colors of their personal favorite soccer team. Beyond my newly-found love of English people and English culture, the English Premier League had the television contract with the most coverage stateside. Now, after picking a league, it was getting down the brass tacks of picking a team.
When I was picking a team to support, I reached out to other soccer fans to see how they decided their team to help me determine the team I would be adopting. After much thought, I pulled together a list together of what I was looking for in a team.
- Good-sized, passionate fanbase, both abroad and with the local supporter club
- Good color scheme and kits (uniforms in England are reserved for the police)
- Celebrity Fans
- Lower “bandwagon” potential. The teams I cheer for in other sports don’t bring me titles, so picking a team without recent titles wouldn’t hurt me.
- Good history and unlikely to be relegated to lower league
- Able to see most of their matches on TV
- After my trip to London, I gave a little extra love for a team from London. If I get back to the UK, I’d love to have a team I could see in person in a more tourist-friendly destination.
Past that list, I reached out to the supporter clubs in the Nashville area to see if they could give me reasons why I should support their team. Soccer is nearly the second most popular sport in the Nashville area, as evidenced by the rapid growth of both Tennessee Soccer Club and Nashville FC. Anyone who got together to watch their match, I tried to make time to see if that group might be the fit for me. Stay tuned……next week, I’ll reveal which team I have decided to follow!
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