World Football Thread XVI - The demise of one Ronaldo and the rise of another

[ískallin]

"My team" is Einherji, my local team I played for and watch every game with. But they play in the Icelandic conference so they arent that interesting to other people.

For your information I started supporting United in 2004 when they won feck all. Why? Because in Iceland there are Liverpool fans all over the place so I wanted to support someone else.

As for ties to Man Utd, one of the boys from my home town (pop 626) went on trial for Man Utd(he got injured and his career ended at 18) so that I guess thats my only link.

[Drake Tungsten]

Don't sweat it, skallin; most of the English fans here are posers too. They'd rather support teams in the Premiership than their true, local team...

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by Colon™
This is crap. So you can't support a team because you don't live near to it, even if you like the team's players, their mentality or their traditions? Only people from Manchester can support Man U? Only the Milanese can support Inter? I don't know if it's just me but 10 years people weren't *****ing that much about this.

Indeed... how many people actually support their local team? Why can't you support a team in the top flight league, that you can see on TV and easily follow, especially if you live in another country.

Just because he's a Manchester United supporter (ok, we should get him a better team ... j/k... barely) really has no bearing on his knowledge of the game. I mean if he backed Portsmouth instead, would you pay more attention to him?

[Cort Haus]

This is my point :

I just refuse to take crap off people who have no credentials other than glory hunting.

By 'crap' I mean bragging rights, mainly.

People can look out for whatever team they want, but my point remains, particularly when it comes to leering overseas Man Utd 'fans' who only support Man Utd so that they can bask in their success.

Yes, Imran, I have far more respect for people who live far away and follow teams that never win anything like Portsmouth, or Newcastle. I said nothing about whether they are deserving of attention, or their knowledge of the game. If people can't understand what's wrong with glory hunting, however, then pffft ....

For my part, I have geographical and family connections with my club going back around a hundred years, and they are my local club, and I walk to games.

If I decide to look out for Inter in Italy, or Lille in France, or Celta Vigo in Spain, then that's fine, but I would never take any glory from any success and would certainly never shove it in the face of any real fans of Italian or French clubs. I wouldn't consider myself a real fan, either.

[MikeH]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui


Indeed... how many people actually support their local team? Why can't you support a team in the top flight league, that you can see on TV and easily follow, especially if you live in another country.

Just because he's a Manchester United supporter (ok, we should get him a better team ... j/k... barely) really has no bearing on his knowledge of the game. I mean if he backed Portsmouth instead, would you pay more attention to him?

The fact is that the big teams are the ones who will be most visible outside Britain. It's ridiculous to criticise people outside the UK for following ManU, Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool, Spurs, Newcastle etc because that's exactly what you'd expect.

Most kids when I was growing up (and probably true up until the last couple of seasons actually...) had a 'premiership team' as well as Reading that they supported purely for the fact that you'd never see Reading on TV, in FA cup finals, Europe etc and it does make things a lot more interesting if you have a team to support. Chelsea were always my premiership team (ever since they were ****, because they were the closest top flight team to where I live), but this season when I went to Reading vs Chelsea I was massively backing Reading (and we were robbed!).

It's all very well local Arsenal fans saying 'you shouldn't follow teams you don't live near' but that's because you have no idea what the realities of following lower division teams are. If you are busy with anything at weekends eg. I was/am in bands you basically never get to see your team play other than 5 seconds of goals on Goals on Sunday if you are lucky. Not that it's that good, lower division football, especially below the championship is pretty dire stuff. I went to some Reading matches when we were in what's League 1 now, and it was rubbish.

If anyone's not sure, can I recommend Reading? Especially good for Americans as we have 2 US players.

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by MikeH
It's all very well local Arsenal fans saying 'you shouldn't follow teams you don't live near'

I don't think anyone said that. It's not the following I have a problem with - it's the leering. I used to post on a (non-football) forum where one guy from Ecuador had "Glory, Glory Man United" on his sig. Made me sick.

[Thedrin]

If Einherji are playing Man Utd. one day and Iskallin chooses to back the English club over his local team (which would be very surprising) then I might have the same reaction as you currently do. Until then, MikeH got it spot on:

Most kids when I was growing up (and probably true up until the last couple of seasons actually...) had a 'premiership team' as well as Reading that they supported purely for the fact that you'd never see Reading on TV,

People want to follow a team in the prestigeous competitions.

[MOBIUS]

So ****ing what???

Mike just came up with a bunch of reasons why overseas fans support the Prem teams they do, as long as the reasons are genuine (i.e. not supporting whichever team is 'best' in a particular year) then they are perfectly entitled to feel good about when their team wins.

IMO, gloating is pretty poor form whether your entire family has lived locally to and supported a team for a hundred years, or if some 'Johnny Foreigner' who's never set foot in the country does it...

As a West Ham fan I could never be accused of gloating, and now that I've moved to Cardiff I also follow my local team - who could conceivably be in the Premiership next year!

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by Cort Haus
This is my point :

I just refuse to take crap off people who have no credentials other than glory hunting.

By 'crap' I mean bragging rights, mainly.

People can look out for whatever team they want, but my point remains, particularly when it comes to leering overseas Man Utd 'fans' who only support Man Utd so that they can bask in their success.

...

Well, from all I've seen ískallin is no more braggart than anyone else in this thread (and is probably less). And he may indeed be correct about Christiano Ronaldo. Simply because he backs a big club doesn't mean he can't delight in their success. He hasn't seemed to be an obnoxious braggart and, taking him at his word (I see no reason not to), his backing of ManU was in response to everyone else around him backing Liverpool. No problems with that... he doesn't exactly have a local English team in Iceland .

[Colon™]

You have to be pretty ill-tempered to deny Cristiano Ronaldo indeed was displaying a superb performance. Cutting into the 6-yard-box along the back line and ending the action with a perfect assist. A rush across the field in sublime cooperation with Rooney. Exhibition stuff.

[MikeH]

Personally, I think foriegn ManU fans should be allowed any and all bragging rights that locals are allowed and consequently we should be able to take the piss out of them when they are losers.

[LordShiva]

[Colon™]

Originally posted by MikeH
Personally, I think foriegn ManU fans should be allowed any and all bragging rights that locals are allowed and consequently we should be able to take the piss out of them when they are losers.

It's for the Football Fanship Commission to decide one's bragging rights, judging on the linkage evidence available.

[ískallin]

Reading is indeed a good choice, added to the two americans they also have two Icelandic players Ívar Ingimarsson and Björn Bjarnarsson.

Anyways, Iceland is playing Spain on the 28th
Hope we dont get humiliated..

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by MOBIUS
IMO, gloating is pretty poor form whether your entire family has lived locally to and supported a team for a hundred years, or if some 'Johnny Foreigner' who's never set foot in the country does it...

As a West Ham fan I could never be accused of gloating, and now that I've moved to Cardiff I also follow my local team - who could conceivably be in the Premiership next year!

I agree that gloating is poor form wherever it comes from, but IMO it's far worse coming from glory-hunting plastics.

As for West Ham having nothing to gloat about - well, I'm often hearing about how they won the World Cup.