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What does a football team represent for you?



Doc Lynam

I hate the Daily Mail
Jun 19, 2011
7,186
Chelsea's Champions League match brought up some intersting points:

Grame Souness said "The reaction of the Chelsea players on the challenge on Oscar is something we can do without. I find it totally unacceptable. That's how pathetic it is." Also commenting that this is creeping more and more into the British game.
How many players in the Chelsea team were from Britain, or more accurately England? What do we expect, a group of forign players to take on the English mentality of winning a match? Do we want to have our cake and eat it?

David Luiz has made a public appoligy for his goal celebration; why? What do supporters expect of hired talent?

What part of the community do our football team represent? Who do we identify with the players, manager or the chairman (local boy made good)?

Chelsea could be and are just an example of many other clubs. As Paul Kingsnorth wrote in his book Real England "we are told we are part of a larger global identy, connected to everything and belonging to know where."
 


Tom Hark Preston Park

Will Post For Cash
Jul 6, 2003
69,880
We, the supporters, ARE the club. Lose the supporters, lose everything. Everybody else, from players to managers to board members to chairmen, are just passing through. :wave:
 


Brovion

Well-known member
NSC Patreon
Jul 6, 2003
19,322
I dunno, I suppose it's different things for different people. For me supporting a team like Brighton it's about a sense of community and local pride. Yes there are foreigners playing for us, but their 'our' foreigners, people who wanted to come here. And we're generally quite perceptive, we can tell the difference between a Calderon and someone who really is just here for the money.

Interestingly I can get my 'sense of community and local pride' from simply using NSC as opposed to actually attending Albion matches.
 




Perfidious Albion

Well-known member
Oct 25, 2011
5,987
At the end of my tether
It is true that we import foreign players for their skill and flair but don't like it when they bring their bad habits too . Can we have one without the other ? Should we expect it ? I don't see why coaches should not insist on better behaviour on the pitch and fine them for breaches of club standards . If they don't like it they can go back abroad......Oh, I should say that the coaches are "foreign" too, so why should they do that???

To me Albion is home, my roots. It is like a woman that you cannot get over . I lived away for years but could not get to support another club.Albion is mine - forever, I guess.

Clubs do have a perceived identity and image.. To me this may be : (entirely subjective )
Chelsea - flash-harry merchants
Man U - Money grabbing big boys in the playground
Man City - The unacceptable face of corporate tax write downs
Liverpool - Faded giants of the past
The old Wimbledon 'crazy gang' - like a bunch of skin heads that you avoided on the way home
I could go on.....
 


el punal

Well-known member
It is true that we import foreign players for their skill and flair but don't like it when they bring their bad habits too . Can we have one without the other ? Should we expect it ? I don't see why coaches should not insist on better behaviour on the pitch and fine them for breaches of club standards . If they don't like it they can go back abroad......Oh, I should say that the coaches are "foreign" too, so why should they do that???

To me Albion is home, my roots. It is like a woman that you cannot get over . I lived away for years but could not get to support another club.Albion is mine - forever, I guess.

Clubs do have a perceived identity and image.. To me this may be : (entirely subjective )
Chelsea - flash-harry merchants
Man U - Money grabbing big boys in the playground
Man City - The unacceptable face of corporate tax write downs
Liverpool - Faded giants of the past
The old Wimbledon 'crazy gang' - like a bunch of skin heads that you avoided on the way home
I could go on.....

What a great post! On many an occasion I've had "discussions" that when you choose your club (for whatever reason - family affiliation, your local team etc.), then that club is yours for life. Through thick and thin, good times and bad times, you stick with them. In my case it's been the Albion since my early teens, as it was my local club - the team that represented Sussex.

My daughters, who were born and bred in Southampton, also show their singular loyalty to the Albion. Why? Because Dad knows best! I took them both to the Goldstone before they were ten and got them - hook, line and sinker.

Which leads to my next point. How can anyone suddenly disown the club that they followed and supported for another? Watching the Chelsea debacle last night I was reminded of Seb Coe. Back in 1983 he was shown distraught after Sheffield Wednesday lost to the mighty Albion in the FA Cup semi-final. Fast forward thirty odd years to a televised match at Stamford Bridge, camera pans onto Lord Coe - described as an avid Chelsea fan blah! blah! So many celebrity Chelsea fans - it begs the question, where were you when you were sh*t?
 



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