Yes, but US fans are typically not as passionate. It's a result of sports being a seasonal round, I think, leaving the typical fan with as many as 6 teams to root for in the course of the year. The NFL follows baseball and precedes basketball and ice hockey, and there are pro and college versions of what we call football and what everyone calls basketball. But we are loyal to our teams--or, to put it another way, I'm not sure if we are more often disloyal than in the UK. I'm not at all sure to what degree this is or isn't true in Asia, though.
There was a guy on my course in uni from Seoul and I've kept in touch with him over the years. Perhaps I'm extrapolating too much but I see him as a typical example of the sports culture out there. He supports Son. Simple as. Fanatically followed Leverkusen for a few years, bought all the bells and whistles and now hasn't watched them play in 2 years. Dumped all the Leverkusen stuff and now walks around in a Spurs shirt. Sorry I tell a lie. He HAS watched Leverkusen play. Twice There are no right or wrong approaches here and one certainly can't accuse such people of being 'plastic' as they would genuinely follow their heroes to the lower leagues if it came to it.
Don't we all do the same to some extent? How many posters here still follow the fortunes of Dawson, Defoe, Mason etc with interest and hoping that they have success? And former players look out for their former clubs too. It's not too far removed for a fan to extend their support to an individual, especially where the player has iconic status - as Son does in his home country.
We've come a long way from loaning in Kazuyuki Toda in a cynical bid to flog some shirts in Japan. Somebody might want to mention this to whoever it is who still decrees that Premier League clubs only sign far Eastern players for the sole purpose of selling shirts in the Far East, though...although given most of their long-held (and obviously wrong) beliefs date back to the 1970s, I'm not holding my breath.
I don't think so. Sure, I and many other Spurs fans still have a load of love for Dawson...but how many Hull games have any of us watched this season? Probably 2 when they played us; maybe a 3rd when the only other game on involved United . To put it another way: how many Spurs fans do you think went out and bought a replica Hull shirt with 'Dawson' on the back? The culture there is as diametrically opposed to our own as is practically possible. Like I said, neither one is the 'correct' approach and neither approach makes fans any more 'real' than the other.
That's very interesting. I wonder how typical your friend is, though. We know that a number of clubs have millions of Asian fans. It's intriguing to find out how and where people are similar and different. I'd answered you by agreeing that US fans are similarly loyal to teams, which I think is correct. But we're different in so many ways relating to sport, perhaps summed up by the fact we put an 's' at the end of the word. To name something trivial, it's hard for me to comprehend you didn't grow up listening to local broadcasters call games. They tended to be bad, these days they're mostly bland and/or bumbling, but the best were legends. There was nothing quite like seeing our flightless birds score an important goal and hear Mike Lange yell, "HE BEAT HIM LIKE A RENTED MULE!"
As there's no other place to put pre-season stuff, here's the squad we're taking to the Volksbank Cup Freeman (GK), Whiteman (GK), Bennetts, Brown, Edwards, Georgiou, Gonzalez-Velasco, Griffiths, Harrison, Lock, Loft, Marsh, Omolabi, Reynolds, Roles, Shashoua, Tsaroulla It's also worth pointing out how mental the schedule for the tournament is... Thursday, May 25 Spurs v Werder Bremen (4.30pm) FC Copenhagen v Spurs (7.30pm) Friday, May 26 Spurs v Red Bull Brazil (2.10pm) Mühlenkreis Team v Spurs (5.30pm) Four games in two days? Shouldn't we be taking more than seventeen players???
It's been announced that we have upgraded our shirt sponsor AIA's status to Global Principal Partner and that arrangement will run until 2022. No figures have been given or even guessed at but the term "significant increase" on previous terms has been used to describe the deal. Again, it's a sign of growth that we've been able to extend and significantly improve this arrangement with a business that is aiming to become the No 1 life insurer worldwide. Added to the Nike kit deal it's real growth in our commercial revenue. Maybe they are our stadium sponsor? If not, maybe connections they can help us with, can become that sponsor? In any event it's all good.
The PL performances over the past two seasons, and the same number of seasons in the CL (group stages at least) , should of course result in Spurs current sponsor paying more money for the increased media exposure they will get accordingly.
I think that games are only 25 mins each half. Fulham competed last year and that was how long they played
Since when has Ozil played for Fulham? He only plays about 25 minutes in every half.....On a good day.
Looked at SpursOfficial today, and you at least get a sense of why the PR is being done in SE Asia this week (AIA demands or not) .
STARTING XI: Lloris, Walker, Alderweireld, Wimmer, Davies, Lesniak, Sissoko, Nkoudou, Eriksen, Son, Janssen In other words, all our supposed want-aways. SUBS: Lopez, Vorm, Trippier, Vertonghen, Amos, Dele, Dier, Miller, Wanyama, Kane, Sterling