The Newbie’s Guide to Soccer: Becoming a Supporter

Now that we’ve covered the basics, you’re going to need a team to support right? Don’t just jump right and pick the first team you see, watch a couple of matches before you pick a team. I’d also suggest taking an in depth look at the team you’re thinking of picking, learn a little about their history, current players, and anything else you might find. After all you’re in a perfect situation for possibly the first time in your life, you’re picking a team without geographical concerns or the influence of a friend or family member on your choice. So don’t just jump in and pick the first team you find, take some time and explore.

You’re also going to need to have access to the team you support, because what good is being a fan of Cambridge United if you have no access to watching them? Sure its fun to pay attention to a team and see that they win, but we don’t just talk about sports all day just to look at standings on the Internet at night.

Who to Support

We’re going to take a look at each of the main leagues available for consumption in the states in this section, with some notes on some of the teams. If you’d really like info on teams not listed, I’d be more than happy to provide it.

English Premier League

The EPL clubs you’re probably most familiar with are Manchester United, Chelsea, Liverpool and Arsenal, and for good reason, they’re the four biggest teams in the league. Which is exactly why I’d advise against picking one of them. We all know that guy, the guy who you see one week in one teams gear and then next week he’s got a shiny new Patriots hat on. That’s just about what you’d be if you picked one of those teams. I don’t really have room to talk, as I’m an Arsenal fan and I settled upon Arsenal right around the time they were runners up in the Champions League. Had I allowed myself the chance to look more in depth, I might have picked a different team.

Now I’m not a fool, I know a lot of people are going to be attracted to the big four, they win, they have a good number of quality players, and they play the game at its highest levels. However, if you’re going to chose one of them, do so much extensive research you can tell somebody everything about your new club. Nothing is worse than being at the pub and hearing something along the lines of “DIRK KUYT IS THE BEST LIVERPOOL STRIKER EVER”, and if you do, expect an older gentleman with a shirt that says Hunt on the back to give you a dirty look.

At the same time you don’t really want to pick a team near the bottom of the table. What fun is it if your team winds up in the second division after your first season of following them? You’re going to loose interest in them and pick a new team probably, so pick wisely.

Teams are listed in order of finish last season, bottom three teams were promoted from the Championship, are still in order of finish from last season. Team name links to Avoiding The Drop’s team previews (hey I’ve gotta support our hard work).

Manchester United Won the overall League and Carling Cup, and lost in the Champions League final last season. Lost some key players this summer though. I’d compare them to the Lakers, they have the best manager in the game, had the best player that everyone loved to hate last season, and they’re never not going to be a force in the game.
Liverpool Haven’t won the league in some time, but always a force in the Champions League, similar to the pre 2003 Red Sox.
Chelsea Only recently became a force in 2003 when owner Roman Abramovich purchased the club, prior to that hadn’t really done too much. Not really a comparable American team, they’re that guy that had a rich uncle that died and he upgraded from a 1989 civic to a 2009 BMW.
Arsenal Traditional powerhouse in England, were a powerhouse in the early ’00s but haven’t won a trophy since 2005 and have replaced their former stars with youngsters. They’re like the Florida Marlins a couple of years after a title if the Marlins had existed for longer than 15 years.
Everton Rivals to Liverpool, American GK Tim Howard plays for them. Plays the second fiddle well like the Chicago White Sox.
Aston Villa Had an incredible start last season but fell flat at the end, full of young talent.
Fulham Often called Fulhamerica for their penchant for American players, Clint Dempsey currently plays for them.
Tottenham Hotspur Rivals to Arsenal, always have high hopes at the start of the season, and always seem to fall short, like the Cubs.
West Ham Barely escaped relegation a couple of years ago, but got a new manager and they played real well last year.
Manchester City If you’re going to cross one team off your list first, this is the one. Second fiddle to Manchester United forever but just a year ago purchased by Billionaire oil sheiks and now they’re playing fantasy football. Don’t be that guy, you’d be jumping into a potentially massive bandwagon at the start. Just no.
Wigan Had some success last season, but sold off and got rid of most of their good players, they play in a rugby town. They are the Pirates in every way.
Stoke City Gritty, kick you in the shins type of team, but they do what it takes to get a result, similar to the San Antonio Spurs.
Bolton They’re like a more experienced version of Stoke, but their prospects for the future aren’t as good.
Portsmouth Sold off quite a few players over the last year and their ownership situation isn’t good right now, pass.
Blackburn Another team that’ll kick you in the shins and make life rough, get unexpected results occasionally.
Sunderland Not a whole lot to get excited about here, unless your best friend is a Newcastle fan, then you can make fun of him. PASS because I don’t know any Newcastle fans.
Hull City I would have trashed them two weeks ago, but they’ve got American superstar Jozy Altidore since then so I can no longer hate on them, but their manager wears a stupid earpiece and he looks like he’s in a tanning competiton with Mike Shanahan.
Wolverhampton Scored a lot of goals in the Championship last season, won’t score as many this season, but could be good.
Birmingham Keep jumping back and forth from the EPL to the Championship like a crazy girlfriend.
Burnley The darkhorse. They’re either going to be awesome or be relegated by December, it’s hard to tell.

Obviously this is not a definitive guide to every team, but simply a glimpse into each of the teams current prospects. If one interests you, do some research.

Now, what do you do when there isn’t an EPL game on but theres, say, a La Liga (Spain) match on? Or what if all those teams bore you and you want to be more continental? Well have no fear, lets look at some of the top teams in the other leagues. I’ll only touch on a couple of teams in each league as I don’t know much about other leagues, and really I doubt you’re going to be looking at Xerez CD as the team you want to support.

La Liga (Spain)

Barcelona The best team in the world last year, won the League, Spanish Cup, and Champions League. They didn’t quite reload like rivals Real Madrid, but they didn’t really need to reload. This league is going to be very entertaining to watch this season as they figure to battle with Madrid all season long.
Real Madrid Reloaded an already good team with Ronaldo, Kaka, Xabi Alonso, and Karim Benzema, four of the best players in the world.  They’ve got the tools, but the only question is if a bunch of guys who are used to featuring on their teams can take lesser roles to take Barca’s top spot.
Sevilla While a lot of teams in Spain are almost exclusively stocked with Spanish players, Sevilla has an interesting global mix led by Mali striker Frédéric Kanouté
Atletico Madrid City rivals to Real Madrid, called Atletico for short. Very potent attacking team with a couple of the more exciting forwards in Spain in Diego Forlan and Kun Aguero
Villarreal The Yellow Submarine is the club that owns Jozy Altidore.  New Jersey’s Guiseppi Rossi who plays for the Italian national team also plays here
Valencia Have been in terrible financial trouble for the past year or so, but still have managed to survive and hold onto their two stars David Villa and David Silva.

Serie A (Italy)

A league that personally I’ve never been able to get into as I’m not into the style of play, it’s also a league without a lot of huge names outside of the top 4-5 clubs, but it’s very entertaining when two of these three tangle:

Inter Milan Italian Champions three years running (technically four) strong team, but filled with a number of players who are getting up there in age.
AC Milan Rivals to Inter, as they share the same stadium. New home of American Oguchi Onyewu, also has a number of aging stars, but also some young electric guys like Alexandre Pato.
Juventus The biggest club in Italy have reloaded after a scandal sent them down to the second division a few seasons back. They’re my pick to win the title this season.

Bundesliga (Germany)
This was the only league out of all the European leagues that went down to the wire last season, and not only that, but there were about 5 clubs challenging for the title with a couple weeks remaining. Probably a step down from the other three leagues in terms of quality, but there is much more excitement in the Bundesliga, and the quality isn’t really that bad. The one bonus is they have Friday afternoon games shown on GolTV, which gives you a little starter for your weekend.

VfL Wolfsburg Last seasons champs, star striker Grafite did this last season, and I’ll just be here watching it over and over.
Bayern Munich The big guys in Germany, though they’ve recently slipped a little.
Stuttgart Quality team that is always up there in the standings, my favorite goalie “Mad” Jens Lehman plays for them.
Hertha BSC Kaka plays here! only problem is its another guy who goes by Kaka, but hey, he is Brazillian.
Hamburg Another traditional German power, have finished in the 3-6 range the last few years.
Hoffenheim Very fun team to watch, took 7th place last year after just being promoted to the top flight.

There are other leagues, most notably Ligue 1 in France, but I just don’t know enough about them, I also assume that if you’re interested enough in a team in France, you’ll want to do the research anyways.

Access

Currently there are three channels that are available that show soccer matches, ESPN could be coming into the mix in the EPL, but as of writing nothing has happened with that, so lets get on with the three:

Fox Soccer Channel: FSC is currently the most accessible channel of the three and often doesn’t even require a special sports tier package from your cable company to purchase and therefore would probably be the easiest channel to access.

FSC currently shows:

• English Premier League-FSC holds the rights to 5 EPL games a week typically, and will usually broadcast three of them live. On Saturdays at 10 am EST and 12pm EST and on Sundays at 11am EST. They also will typically show replays of some of these games throughout the week. They also show the Premier League Fan Zone match (usually on Tuesdays) which is a match from that week commentated by a fan from each of the teams, it is usually high comedy as the people in the booth are usually very rabid fans. FSC also shows various EPL related programming throughout the week.
• Serie A- FSC typically shows three live matches a week from the Serie A, 2:30 PM EST on Saturdays and 9 am EST and 2:30 PM EST on Sundays
• Champions League- I’m not quite sure what FSC’s coverage of this will be as they just got the rights that ESPN used to hold for the competition, but according to Wikipedia; “FSC has the first, third, and fourth pick of live matches for each night of the competition. Two of the live matches will originally air on Fox Sports Espanol or regional FOX Sports Net/Comcast SportsNet affiliates, with rebroadcasts on FSC.” The Champions League airs live on Tuesdays and Wednesdays at 2 PM EST.
• FSC also has rights to various other programming, including MLS, Argentine Primeria Division (hopefully), and many international games. They also show Sky Sports News from the UK and Fox Soccer Report nightly.

GolTV: GolTV is available from most providers but is usually packaged in the sports tier so access can become a little more expensive than FSC. Though announcer Ray Hudson is worth the price of admission alone. If you’re looking form La Liga or Bundesliga, this is your place though.

• La Liga-GolTV has the rights to La Liga, but they’ve split them this season with ESPN, who will show some matches on ESPN2 and ESPN Deportes. No idea how that’ll shake out yet though.
• Bundesliga-They hold the exclusive rights to the Bundesliga in the US, and usually show the Friday game, plus one or two live weekend games. Gol is pretty good with picking the best games to show too.
• Various South American Leagues, including Brazil, Colombia, and Uraguay.

Setanta Sports: Setanta is the most expensive of the three, it’s about $15 per month and is really for the hardcore addict. Setanta went through some financial troubles this summer, but luckily the US channel remained relatively unharmed. Setanta had the rights to the morning EPL games that ESPN is looking to pick up, but no word still on whats going on with that.

• English Premier League-Setanta holds the rights to games at 10 am EST on Saturdays and 8:30 am EST on Sundays, and shows replays of a couple of other games throughout the day.
• English Championship- Setanta holds the rights to about 60 English Championship matches, which breaks down to about 2 per week.
• French Ligue 1-Setanta has the rights to two live Ligue 1 games per week.
• English FA Cup- Various games throughout the Cup
• Scottish Premier League- Setanta holds 60 matches per season from Scotland.
• Champions League-Setanta gets the second pick of live Champions League matches, will show 30 live matches and another 48 replays.

ESPN 360: While not really a channel and more reliant upon who your Internet carrier is, 360 has the rights to both the Dutch and Portuguese leagues as well as some various other programming.

So we’ve reached the end, I hope you enjoyed the information I’ve provided here and make a smart choice when picking a team, but if you’ve got questions about the team you want to support, feel free to ask away in the comments, or email me at adam@thephoenixpub.com

Tags: Adam, Bundesliga, English Premier League, ESPN 360, footy, Fox Soccer Channel, GolTV, La Liga, Serie A, Setanta Sports, soccer
Categories: Daily Specials, Imports

This entry was posted on Friday, August 14th, 2009 at 3:15 pm and is filed under Daily Specials, Imports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.