Image via Complex Original
For as long as I can remember, there have been four major sports in America—football, basketball, baseball, and hockey. I was never a big fan of the latter two, but I always respected their place near the top the totem pole of athletics in this country. Over the past several years, though, this longstanding hegemony has been challenged.
Three years ago, the largest association football league in the world, the Premier League, sold its television rights to NBC Sports, providing tens of millions of Americans access to matches once reserved for top-flight cable packages. Since then, U.S. viewership of the league has increased by 234 percent, with more viewers on average tuning into the 380 weekly matches broadcasted on NBC, NBCSN, and NBCSports.com (514,000 per match) than the regular season NHL games televised on those networks (503,000 per game). Indeed, the most-viewed league in the world is also one of the fastest-growing in the American market.
Perhaps you have friends who have already been indoctrinated into the dedicated religion that is the Premier League. Maybe you’d like to join them before the new nine-month campaign begins this Saturday, but you don’t know where to begin, who to root for, or whether or not it’s okay to refer to the sport as soccer.
You’re not alone. In fact, that’s exactly where I was earlier this summer, when a week-long trip to Ireland that happened to coincide with the Euro 2016 tournament turned my latent interest in association football into an insatiable itch. Two months later, I’m still clumsily working my way through the basic details of the league and its clubs, history, and culture.
Because of my nascent understanding of the Premier League and crippling fear of judgment, I’ve attempted to navigate this path while avoiding coming across like a dumb American asshole as best as possible. It’s difficult, though, because when it comes to the sport, I am a dumb American asshole. When I hear the name Ronaldo, the first thing that pops into my mind is the surname Balkman. If a player isn’t a mainstay on the international teams I play as on FIFA, I probably haven’t heard of them. And I can’t help but call it offsides. Every. Single. Goddamn. Time. Through my trials and errors, I’ve learned a great deal, and for those of you who wish to join me in taking the Premiership plunge here is my advice. This is How to Become a Premier League Fan Without Becoming an Asshole.
Don't be a club-hopping asshole.
The Premiership features 20 clubs, 17 carry over from the season prior while three well-performing clubs from the secondary English Football League Championship replace the bottom three performers from the previous Premier League season. In all, there are 92 clubs between the Premiership and Championship as well as two additional subsidiary divisions, Football League One and Football League Two. That said, you’re going to want to choose a club that’s in the Premier League, both for ease of television viewing and, well, because the Premiership is way more fun.
With 20 clubs to choose from and not a lot to base your decision upon at this point, you’re really going to want to delay your choice for as long as possible. One Premier League fan I spoke to suggested watching until New Year’s Day, the mid-season mark, before choosing a club. Doing so gives you a chance to really get to understand and know a handful of clubs fairly well before making a choice, because once you pick you really shouldn’t change your mind. True Premiership fans won’t take you seriously if you pledge allegiance to reigning champion Leicester City Week One only to drop them for Tottenham Hotspur towards the end of the year when the Spurs start to get hot. Which leads me to my next bit of advice…
Try not to be a front-running asshole.
The easiest way to not be a total asshole when determining your allegiance is to avoid using prestige and immediate title chances as the only factors in your decision. There are a couple reasons it sucks if you do this. Nobody likes the person who lists the Cowboys, Lakers, Yankees, and Blue Devils as their favorite teams in their Twitter bio. Don't be that person. Also, choosing a club based solely upon past or projected success makes it much more likely that once they fall upon hard times you’ll find yourself having little connection to the team itself—its fans, its culture, its history, etc.
When you’re first starting out as a Premier League follower, try to seek out local bars that open early for matches on Saturday and Sunday morning or, better yet, serve as gathering places for supporters of one team in particular. You can learn a lot about the culture surrounding the different clubs from watching matches alongside other fans, and it’s possible that those experiences will make you more or less likely to support a given club.
But of course there’s a balance. As someone with no geographic ties to any of the clubs, you’ll probably be inclined to choose one that you’re confident won’t be relegated down to a league that will be difficult to watch week-to-week without a premier cable package or a reliable streaming website. But you don’t have to root for Manchester United or Arsenal to avoid such a fate. There are plenty of teams, from Everton, to Swansea City, to West Ham, to Stoke City that are fairly safe to stay up and with whom you can grow as a fan as they slowly work their way up the ranks. But before you even worry about deciding your allegiance…
Learn the terminology, asshole.
One of the most intimidating things about becoming a fan of a new sport is the feeling of discomfort one feels while speaking about it publicly. This is especially true when it comes to soccer, a sport with a name whose utterance alone can induce terror. You’ll notice that I used the term soccer here. That is because it is the more commonly used term for football among American fans. Obviously, that distinction exists because of the overwhelming popularity of gridiron football, which we simply call football, in the States.
Soccer was actually originally a British term, used to differentiate association football from rugby football. But over time, the English drifted away from it. Some particularly haughty football fans in the UK will scoff at the use of the word soccer by Americans to describe their sport, but in my opinion those people are the only assholes in that equation. Firstly, the distinction serves a purpose here in America, in much the same way I wouldn’t expect those living in the UK to refer to our version of football by that name alone. Secondly, we have our own professional league, the MLS, which proudly uses the term soccer to define its game. And thirdly, it’s their own damn word to begin with.
My opinion on soccer vs. football is this: When you’re talking to fellow Americans, feel free to use soccer. It eliminates the potential for confusion and probably just feels more natural for everyone involved anyway. But when you’re talking to fans of the sport from outside the US, or when you’re speaking to an online audience that likely includes a decent number of non-Americans, try to use football.
Most fans will agree that there are other commonly misused terms that are far more annoying than the use of the word soccer. For example, draw vs. tie, nil vs. zero, extra time vs. overtime, offside vs. offsides, boots vs. cleats, etc. Using these incorrectly won’t necessarily draw ire, but it may serve to draw unnecessary attention to your nascent understanding of the sport. But with that said…
Ask questions, asshole.
The fact of the matter is that you’re going to come in knowing very little about the sport and the flow of a Premier League season. As you watch matches week-to-week, you’ll begin to become more and more fluent in both the strategic aspects of the game and its cultural nuances, but it will take a long time to get to where you probably are with the American sports you already follow. That’s why you shouldn’t shy away from asking questions when you don’t understand a rule, a coaching decision, a particular rivalry, what makes a certain player so well-liked or well-respected, etc. The worst thing you can do is to come in pretending like you already know it all.
For the most part, longtime Premiership fans, especially those living in the US, are pretty cool about helping newcomers better understand the sport. All the ones I’ve spoken with have been incredibly patient with me and, frankly, pretty damn excited to share their knowledge. As fans of a sport that has yet to fully grasp mainstream appeal in America, most are thrilled to hear that others living here are beginning to take interest in it.
Really, becoming a Premier League fan is like any other endeavor. Just be thoughtful about it and respect the knowledge of those more experienced than you, and you’ll probably avoid coming across like an asshole.
