I have very little time, at the moment, to indulge in any new pastimes. Recently, however, I declared an intention to begin rooting for a team in the English Premiereship – I’ve felt I’m missing something in not following the beautiful game more closely – and I felt the best route towards a greater knowledge of it would be some good old fashioned partisanship.
Via Twitter, I sent out a call for suggestions – which club should I make my own? In short order, Godd Till of Cox Bloc/Zambonic Youth fame had convinced me that I was a spiritual match for Manchester City. Blue and white colours, tragically underachieving, its most hated rival a much more decorated club clad in red, the parallels to Leafdom were fairly obvious. But what sealed the deal for me was the song – Blue Moon. When I saw that video, I knew I’d found a football home. Though there are many other songs celebrating the Citizens, Blue Moon being sung from the stands spoke to me.
As usual, real life got in the way and I kind of shelved the project for a few days. At lunch today, though, I got thinking about it again – after a little prompting yesterday from Godd Till – and decided that I needed to stop dicking around and just make a choice.
So I made the decision, right around two o’clock today: City ’til I die for me.
Well, it turned out that today was a good day to start rooting for City; the Blues were paired off against United in a Carling Cup (yeah, I don’t know what that is really either) semi-final match this afternoon. I was unable to watch the match, but I did follow along via Twitter as City rallied from an early deficit to chase the visitors by a margin of 2-1 in the first leg of a two-match test that by the sounds of it is a total goals deal. Some fellow named Tevez apparently played ridiculously well and notched both goals in the win; evidently this is somewhat poignant as Tevez was formerly employed by his adversaries, leaving the United lot behind in rather acrimonious fashion as I understand it.
I did a little more research this evening into the antecedents of my new team. Good news! It turns out the owners of the club are filthy rich, which ought to come in handy. As I understand it, there’s rather a lot of money involved in the EPL and I am greatly relieved that my new club seems to have the means to field a competitive squad.
Now all I have to do is figure out how the hell I”m going to watch the matches.
UNITED, bra!
Hell of a day to start!
You can find internet streams on http://www.myp2pforum.eu or you can buy Setanta for $15/mo.
The Carling Cup is generally regarded as the least of England’s trophies but Slur Alex (because he’s a drunk Scotsman and somehow a knight when Bob Paisley was a better manager and is still just plain ol’ Bob [RIP]) put out his best squad.
The semi-final is total goals but away goals decide things if they are tied so City need to avoid losing 1-0 at Old Toilet (ie Old Trafford).
@eye: I may be doing this wrong, but I believe I’m pretty much obligated to respond as follows – WHO THE FUCK ARE MAN UNITED?
@PPP: thx for the info re: streaming and Setanta, I’ll have to have a conversation with Spouse about that one…gotta love that “away goals” wrinkle, should make next Wednesday’s match interesting.
You can follow the Premier League on Saturday morning at 10:00 am on Sportsnet. Also The Score usually has a game on Sunday morning. To really enjoy your following of the league, I suggest you try picking the winners each week in the contest at http://fantasy.sportsnet.ca/sportsnet/pp09/home
I actually did pretty well one week this year when I came 3rd. I am currently tied for 1,237th place so you can see it was an unusually good week for me!
I thought you might pick Chelsea as your team as they are also Blue and White, have lots of money, have lots of following across England and around the world and are detested because they come from the major city in England. Sounds like a pretty good comparison to the Leafs?
Anyway, since your mother’s ancestors have roots in Manchester, you probably on balance made the best choice. Although I do have a snappy Chelsea coffee mug and particularly sporty Chelsea Scarf in my possession from my days in London.
By the way, when I was there I went to see Arsenal play Chelsea at Stanford Bridge (home park for Chelsea) with The Woot who is A Red Wing Fan. I took the Blues, he took the Reds. The Blues gave up a goal in the last minute to allow the Reds to tie. Another ressemblance to the Leafs?
@geezer: Chelsea was in the running. I asked around a bit and the general consensus was that many Chelsea fans were bandwagoners of questionable repute. I also wasn’t getting a satisfactory answer from anyone about a Chelsea song, and I also consulted the tables and learned that Chelsea is in first place. I don’t think I could morally distinguish myself from the Dallas Cowboys/Montreal Canadiens fans that I so despised in my youth; the ones who chose to follow the team because they won.
It was at that point that @zambonicyouth, aka Godd Tillsent me a link to the Blue Moon video. A very earnest discussion ensued during which I was being urged by supporters of other clubs not to follow the path of tragedy. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed to fit – I wasn’t unmindful of Mom’s Mancunian roots, and I just knew I would quite easily find it in myself to hate United. That kind of made the choice for me!
I’ve only come across one little fact about the Citizens that has given me some pause: you probably know that they’ve moved out of their historic park for a more modern stadium. I really wish that weren’t the case; but I guess even Tiger Stadium has gone by the wayside, so you can’t have everything.
You missed out on throwing you support behind the only club truely responsible for England’s only and likely ever world cup – West Ham United. I do not believe that the Manc ‘Sky Blue’ resembles the TML as you have been duped to believe. Believe me, West Ham are not under achievers they are well and truely non achievers. This, if nothing else would would be more appropriate for you given your TML affiliations. Good luck with the Arabs at “Citeh”, at least they have money, but little class (see what they just recently did to their manager).
Late Bulletin. Mom advises me her Grandfather was a United fan. Oops!
*facepalm*