Your favorite team doesn't give a damn about you

The whole concept of clubs moving towns is ridiculous to the European mind, and with good reason.

BhritanniaBhlue wrote:

Forza Rossoneri wrote:I could never imagine a European football team moving to a different state or different city for financial reasons.

Sort of an apples and oranges situation

Soccer is so pervasive in European sports, just look at England...every freaking city/town you go to there's a professional team playing at some level, thats not the case in the U.S - here there are cities with over a million people without major sports teams....LA has 15 million people in their metropolitan area yet they don't have an NFL team - thats mostly because they are all soulless fame-suckers but you see my point....15 million and no freaking NFL team? Are there cities of more than 100 thousand in England without a soccer team in their metropolitan area? I'd be shocked if there were

In American sports, if a team is going the way of Portsmouth, they can up and move to a different city in hopes of a more favorable atmosphere, because there are cities with literally millions of people who don't have one or more professional sports teams....You simply don't have that in a place like England

Also as BC mentioned American sports are franchised, there are significant differences between that system and the european club-system (regardless of who they are owned by)

wait, hold on
is moving cities a normal and/or regular thing in American sports, because ive never heard of it in football and in Australian sports the closest thing we've had to that is mergers, and all clubs that have merged have been from pretty much neighbouring suburbs anyway so its never been too drastic
im sorry, it just doesnt compute with me....

VivaStPauli wrote:The whole concept of clubs moving towns is ridiculous to the European mind, and with good reason.

Any mind outside America lol

Moving my home town club would make zero sense to me as well lol

free_cat wrote:US teams =/= European teams owned by private investors =/= European Clubs owned by it's members.

Barça would never, ever, move to another town. The board of directors cares a lot about their fans because they pay the club, and more importantly the president of the club is our bitch, because we voted him, and if we don't like him, we'll kick him out. He'd better start licking us.

I agree that the players don't care about the fans; it's normal, they don't know them personally and it's their job.

Thats sort of my point, though - the board of directors care only because of money....and that brings us right back to the stripper metaphor

fatman123 wrote:

BhritanniaBhlue wrote:

Forza Rossoneri wrote:I could never imagine a European football team moving to a different state or different city for financial reasons.

Sort of an apples and oranges situation

Soccer is so pervasive in European sports, just look at England...every freaking city/town you go to there's a professional team playing at some level, thats not the case in the U.S - here there are cities with over a million people without major sports teams....LA has 15 million people in their metropolitan area yet they don't have an NFL team - thats mostly because they are all soulless fame-suckers but you see my point....15 million and no freaking NFL team? Are there cities of more than 100 thousand in England without a soccer team in their metropolitan area? I'd be shocked if there were

In American sports, if a team is going the way of Portsmouth, they can up and move to a different city in hopes of a more favorable atmosphere, because there are cities with literally millions of people who don't have one or more professional sports teams....You simply don't have that in a place like England

Also as BC mentioned American sports are franchised, there are significant differences between that system and the european club-system (regardless of who they are owned by)

wait, hold on
is moving cities a normal and/or regular thing in American sports, because ive never heard of it in football and in Australian sports the closest thing we've had to that is mergers, and all clubs that have merged have been from pretty much neighbouring suburbs anyway so its never been too drastic
im sorry, it just doesnt compute with me....

Depends on how you define "regular"

Lets look at the NBA:

Oklahoma City Thunder moved from Seattle to Oklahoma in 2008
Charlotte Hornets moved to New Orleans in 2001
Vancouver Grizzlies moved to Memphis in 2001

After that I think you need to go back to the 80s to find a team moving cities, so it depends on whether you consider it regular or not...

Moving cities is something that occurs when a franchise realizes that city's market can't support the team...This is foreign to all of you guys because soccer is your only (major) sport you have, so even small towns can support one club

But here we've got 5 sports all competing against eachother...Philadelphia is one of only 12 cities to have the big four sports (and even less have those 4+MLS)

Seattle has 600,000 people in the City, but they had NBA, MLB, NFL, and MLS teams, and in their case they just couldn't support 4 major teams with their demographics, so the Sonics moved...

This wouldn't happen in England because clubs are different then franchises, where Pompey went bankrupt, the Sonics simply moved...But its hard for you to understand because even if an English club COULD move, where the f*ck would they go? London? Already like a dozen clubs there.... Manchester? Loads of clubs already in the greater Manchester area too etc etc on and on you get my point....Even if the clubs wanted to move there would be nowhere to go - thats not the case in the U.S...Oklahoma city has a metro population of over a million and zero competition for the fanbase, really...Memphis? Exact same scenario



I'm digressing like crazy here: Yes, American sports franchises sometimes move, and its almost always the same case: A City takes on more sports teams than its population demographics can support, so the teams have to go somewhere else to survive based on the market (You'll never see this happen in Chicago/Boston/Philly/NYC etc) but thats not the point of the article - that is only an example used by the other to display the fact that the team doesn't care about the fans, thats not really the point in and of itself...

Springfield Isotopes nearly moved to Albuquerque in 2001.

This is a North American thing pretty much.. That's why I don't support any teams over here, just follow my favorite players

Forza Rossoneri wrote:Springfield Isotopes nearly moved to Albuquerque in 2001.

:lol!:

People should just erase the final paragraph and read it again. The point the OP is making is not at all about relocation, heck, the father's funny speech was made decades before this proposed move was even thought of.

It's about the role of the sports franchise/club/organization and it's deterioration of morals and principles to its current role of nothing but a moneymaking machine and little else. A point that is true for football, true for football, true for basketball, true for baseball, etc.

justdoit_ wrote:People should just erase the final paragraph and read it again. The point the OP is making is not at all about relocation, heck, the father's funny speech was made decades before this proposed move was even thought of.

It's about the role of the sports franchise/club/organization and it's deterioration of morals and principles to its current role of nothing but a moneymaking machine and little else. A point that is true for football, true for football, true for basketball, true for baseball, etc.

Milan is not just a money-making machine to me.

Forza Rossoneri wrote:

justdoit_ wrote:People should just erase the final paragraph and read it again. The point the OP is making is not at all about relocation, heck, the father's funny speech was made decades before this proposed move was even thought of.

It's about the role of the sports franchise/club/organization and it's deterioration of morals and principles to its current role of nothing but a moneymaking machine and little else. A point that is true for football, true for football, true for basketball, true for baseball, etc.

Milan is not just a money-making machine to me.

Thats the point though...to you, Milan means something
...but do you mean anything to Milan?

The answer to that is no...and the same goes for all of us - sports are a business and fans are nothing but sources of revenue

BhritanniaBhlue wrote:

free_cat wrote:US teams =/= European teams owned by private investors =/= European Clubs owned by it's members.

Barça would never, ever, move to another town. The board of directors cares a lot about their fans because they pay the club, and more importantly the president of the club is our bitch, because we voted him, and if we don't like him, we'll kick him out. He'd better start licking us.

I agree that the players don't care about the fans; it's normal, they don't know them personally and it's their job.

Thats sort of my point, though - the board of directors care only because of money....and that brings us right back to the stripper metaphor

Yeah, but that's only one rof several arguments that I gave.
Yes, the club cares about me. More than that, I AM THE CLUB. (a small part of it).

You lot are missing the point, like justdoit said. This isn't about relocation, it is about the structure of our relationship with our teams.

I often get told by family members/friends "why would you let them losing ruin your day, they are just a soccer team" it is true. Purely an entertainment purpose. From that entertainment purpose we force ourselves to get emotionally involved, to the point where we LOVE our team. Love is never rational. What does "fan" mean? Fanatic. None of our actions need to be rational.

And truly it is completely irrational to have affection or a lifeless entity that cares not for your existence nor does it care for your thoughts or feelings. Your favourite team would be JUST THE SAME if you didn't exist, and that is fine. We don't care because we love them.

Humans enjoy feeling a part of something bigger than ourselves. That's why we cheer for teams. Yes we get entertainment out of the sport itself but also because we like being part of a "family". We suffer through the loses because they make the joys that much better. Ask Juve fans how happy they are this year. From shitting the bed for the past couple years to being undefeated. They must be on cloud 9.

Our actions need not be rationalized. It is an unrequited love we have with our teams, but we still get the feelings of "family" from the team. So they give us something in the end.

My club does care about me. Zidane told me so :vagi: