American transplant - please teach me about Football!

[northwoods]

Hello all,

I've recently moved to London and I've never, ever been to a football match before. As you may well know my people across the pond have our own wacky sports and whilst I played football as a youth I've never watched a match or been to a game. It's high time that I rectified this, and I'm hoping to find someone willing to school me a bit on how it works and who I should be supporting... the latter issue seems to be the most important, here!

Anyway, I'm a reasonably genial guy of 35, very fond of beer and other tasty beverages, and I'm happy to buy a few rounds of pints in exchange for some football knowledge!

Located in Forest Hill area but obviously I'm happy to come to you or meet you in a pub, etc.

Thanks!

[????]

if you are american you probably like winners so you shouldn't be supporting any of the following teams:

Locally:

Crystal Palace

Millwall (really crap)

Charlton

Sadly all crap.

Dulwich Hamlet are our local non-league team but still get gates of a few 100 and it's cheap to get into and the bar's good value.

In London other crap teams include: QPR just relegated; Fulham boringly average; Spurs - ideas above their station

Decent London teams include Arsenal (OK), Chelsea (absolute scumbags)

If you have a soul, you'll support West Ham, a quickish trip on the overland/jubilee/district line from FH and the only english team to win a World Cup

You'll probably opt for Manchester United, but you live in London; you'll never see them and you admit you don't know much about football. These factors would make you a typical Man U fan....so go for them

[northwoods]

Your response is one of the reasons I love reading the Forum.

I'm an american but from a remote "flyover state" with likely more cows than people, so we're used to being second best. I can't think of the last time any of my hometown sports teams won anything to be honest. So I'm used to supporting the underdog.

Even I have heard of Man U and the sheer fact I'm aware of them seems like a good reason to avoid. Plus there's millions of people worldwide to support them so no reason I should start!

I'm open to suggestions, so I'll take your West Ham idea on board.

[Jah Lush]

Not mate. Do yourself a favour. Support Tottenham Hotspur. We always strive to play entertaining attacking football. Quids may tell you we've got ideas above our station but we're are definitely going places and on the up with or without Gareth Bale. Seriously, West Ham are crap. Come on you Spurs!

[red devil]

northwoods, ???? is what is known as Care in the Community, best to humour him. He usually goes away, well Monday to Thurs pm he does...I think it's when he takes his medicine.

Why don't you start off by supporting your local team, Dulwich Hamlet, and see how you get on...

[Peckhamgatecrasher]

???? is truly dotty, so ignore his suggestions. Plus West Ham play in a diabolical strip of claret and blue - very offensive to the eyes.

You'd be better going for a local team: Dulwich Hamlets play in a very fetching pink - obviously real men; or Millwall play in a refined, elegant and understated blue and white strip - obviously gentlemen with sartorial nous.

[red devil]

PGC is right, sartorial Millwall fans also wear matching knuckledusters and steel toe-cap boots...I hope you're Googling all this.

[Gingerbeer]

Woohoo! Here's to flyover states! (Iowa)

[northwoods]

Dulwich Hamlet plays in pink? that's a very pride-ful gesture, I'm sure it would be fun to watch. I'll try to visit one of their matches. Millwall fans geared up for a fight might be interesting - I've heard a lot about soccer hooligans but I didn't know England was still keeping reservoirs of them on-hand except for UK vs Germany games...

Gingerbeer: I'm from Minnesota, and we both know we have more to offer than those horrible hipsters on the coasts!

[northwoods]

Thankfully I don't have to google, my wife is english (Herne Hill born and bred) so I have an in-house translator. She's a rugby fan though and thusly I need help to decipher the meaning behind football as a sport. As near as I can tell, it involves a lot of fake injuries and faux-hawks, but perhaps there's more to it than that.

[????]

Minnesota, the state of bob Dylan and the artist formally known as Prince so not completely Hicksville (unlike Millwall).

[northwoods]

Mindbogglingly enough, my home state has a football club:

Minnesota United FC

never heard of it, and we've got a state of 6 million people who probably haven't either. Maybe there's some culture developing over there? I'll bet they don't even have metal detectors or gun patdowns at the door!

[edhistory]

Attendance: 6,367 ? Toyota Field

[northwoods]

Right, so looks like they've got a long way to go.

In the states football is mostly considered a children's game, so while most kids play it in their youth (like myself) very few go on to play it after the age of 13-14, instead switching to american football or baseball (glorified rounders) or some such. I think this is the problem for acceptance, and also why I have no clue about the fundamentals of the sport.

I grew up playing ice hockey so I'm fond of sports that involve fights - hence rugby's appeal. I get the feeling the fighting in football mostly involves the fans, not the players...

[david_carnell]

Your self deprecation and mockery of US sports is certainly endearing you.

Baseball - glorified rounders

American Football - costume rugby

Basketball - netball for boys

Now...how about some cricket? England are currently contesting Australia for a small urn of burnt wood remains over 25 days worth of play. It can still end in a draw. Now THAT is a sport. You can support Surrey. They play up the road in, err, South London's The Oval. We even have a sort of US-friendly version of cricket played in coloured outfits, loud music upon scoring and possibly cheerleaders. Oh, and you can drink loads too. You'll feel almost at home in the bleachers.

Plus a British summer (when cricket is played) is not dissimilar to a Minnesota winter!

[edhistory]

http://www.weather.com/weather/wxclimatology/monthly/graph/USMN0503

[Applespider]

northwoods Wrote:

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> Mindbogglingly enough, my home state has a

> football club:

>

> Minnesota United FC

>

Your football (US) team isn't that hot either. I have a long-suffering Viking friend. Are you going to go to see the Vikes at Wembley next month? I wouldn't bother with trying to get to grips with games that involve round balls - join your wife at the rugby, far more fun!

[david_carnell]

edhistory Wrote:

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> http://www.weather.com/weather/wxclimatology/month

> ly/graph/USMN0503

Oh for the love of god you blinkin' idiot. You really are an arse sometimes. I know how cold their winters are. It was meant to be a joke. Irony. Sarcasm. About our poor weather in summer.

Whatever - it was clearly an opportunity for you to play one-upmanship. But I'm going to be Ian Carmichael to your Terry Thomas. Hard cheese.

[northwoods]

Cricket, I'll confess, absolutely befuddles me - I understand that the bowler has to hit the sticks with the ball, and the batsman(?) needs to protect them somehow, but beyond that I'm lost about the rest of the process. The idea of a game taking 5 days to complete, that's really something, isn't it? And to have that end in a draw no less.

I've spotted the Oval, although mostly while stuck in traffic trying to edge past it, so thank you for hinting at it's secondary purpose beyond causing traffic backups. I'm happy to know this. I will have to investigate attending a match, although I may need to purchase some sort of guide book - Lonely Planet Guide to Cricket, perhaps, or Cricket for Dummies?

Mocking american sports is never difficult and in fact is perhaps a sport unto itself; I've never been a fan of american football (costume rugby is an apt term) so it's quite easy to poke fun at it first and foremost. My brother lives in a small college town in Iowa, and the population goes from 68,000 people to over 120,000 people on "game days" when the university team is playing american football. Watching 60k people wearing horrible colors and facepaint and grilling hamburgers on barbecues that mount on the back of their giant pickup trucks - that's never really worked for me, it's kind of terrifying. There's something weird about it that also speaks volumes about us americans as a people. What can I say?

My wife and I have been living in France the last few years and we'd routinely go watch the rugby matches at a bar in Strasbourg - often we're the only ones cheering for England, while everyone else cheers for "whoever is not England". So I'm happy I was able to stand up for England and shout down the french lads around us last go-around in the Six Nations. Not so much that I understood the whole game, but it's rather hard not to shout in such circumstances, isn't it? That's also why I want to attend a large football match here, to experience some of that in person. We don't have the same kind of rivalries in the states.

The last winter I spent in Minnesota had a memorable week of temperatures in the -30C range, can't say I miss that much. Your weather here is some of the nicest I've ever seen, rain and all.

[northwoods]

I do believe one-upsmanship is a recognized Olympic sport, these days.

[edhistory]

The allusion resolves itself to Stephen Potter.

John K

[Gingerbeer]

Northwoods I have to know... is your brother a cyclone or a hawkeye?

['bout now]

watch the video, you're not alone

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2013/08/05/jason_sudeikis_soccer_ad_an_american_coach_in_london_watch_nbc_premier_league.html

[Iain]

Hi Northwoods

If your wife is into rugby and you live in the Forest Hill area, you could come down and watch grass roots rugby at Kings College Hospital RFC, a P4 bus ride from the Horniman Museum and a short walk from Dulwich Village to our ground on Turney Road.

The season starts in a month or so, our first home game of the season is on September 14th - 3pm kick off, see www.kchrfc.co.uk for more details. We have a bar, friendly supporters and we've even had a few Americans play for us over the years.

We are based here: http://goo.gl/maps/QoRct if you fancy the oval ball instead of the round one.

Iain

[maxxi]

northwoods Wrote:

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> Cricket, I'll confess, absolutely befuddles me..

The idea of a game taking 5

> days to complete, that's really something, isn't

> it? And to have that end in a draw no less.

Can seem a little daft - like when two baseball teams play each other four days in a row and win two each.

ETA: take some time to tune into TMS on BBC Radio5 Live Sports Extra http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/cricket/tms/6104978.stm - even if you are still befuddled you'll learn a lot about cake. Oh, and possibly pigeons.