How Does An American Sports Writer Pick A Premiership Team?

Filed in archive Premiership 2006/7 , US Soccer on July 25, 2006

image: yaysports.com

US sports columnist Bill Simmons enjoyed the World Cup enough to give regular football a try, and has committed to supporting a domestic team for at least one season.

Though he's a Boston sports fanatic, he overlooked the New England Revolution (and the rest of MLS) in favour of the English Premier League, which says a lot about many American's attitude to their league. Never mind.

How does someone with very little knowledge of the beautiful game decide who to support? Simmons did some on-line research, and read through a ton of e-mails from football-fans before going for Tottenham Hotspur.

He seems to have grasped some fundamentals of being a Spurs fan:

"The Spurs," he writes. "This is important: You either call then "Tottenham Hotspur" or you call them "the Spurs," but no other option is acceptable."

Unfortunately, just two paragraphs later he refers to "the Hotspurs fans." At least he's trying though.

The entire article is funny (Simmons is a good writer), but it's also fascinating to read someone getting to know football. Read it here, or if you're too lazy to read all of it (6,000 words) read just the second page (where he's already narrowed it down to 6 teams) here.