Essential The Official Football (Soccer) Thread - We are SO back, the Premier League returns!

BIGDENNIS10UK

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Lads, what is this tumblr and are there any good ones?

I just added it to my iPhone, where's the lulz?
 

Mané Swagincha

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Rafa, who are you looking to sign in the summer since the King's stepped down compadre?


Back to having the best midfield in the wooooorld?!
 

Mané Swagincha

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I love you Wafa

Alberto-Aquilani-Rafa-Benitez.jpg


image-3-for-liverpool-fc-s-xabi-alonso-image-gallery-gallery-490386100.jpg


:sadbron:
 

Edmundinho

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holli/LS/liverpool crew, I made it brehs :lift:




the sohh thread was a ghost town.




this place is :lift: i look forward to posting here




it's gonna be a hot summa on merseyside
 

yoyoyo1

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I could easily edit my last post but this deserves its own post:

Supporters Week: Respecting the original MLS "crazies" | MLSsoccer.com

It's a GREAT artivle


All that good stuff about La Barra Brava/Screaming Eagles, Section 8, etc. and how American club fan culture is taken for granted today, but mostly didn't even exist in 1996.

I'll just post the first paragraph. Anyone around the world will appreciate the struggle

NEW YORK -- On any given weekend, you can turn on the TV and see Seattle’s Emerald City Supporters or Portland’s Timbers Army or Philadelphia’s Sons of Ben doing what they do best: supporting their club. They sing, they chant, they unfurl massive banners and wave flags. The atmosphere they create rivals any in the world, from Buenos Aires to Barcelona.

The amazing thing is, it all seems so normal, especially to those supporters. Of course there are passionate fans at the stadium. Of course they sing and display clever tifo. Of course they live and die with their club.

Of course? Well, for many longtime North American soccer fans who grew up in a different, less-soccer-crazy era, the supporters culture around MLS these days still sends chills up and down their spines. Because there was a time when it wasn’t normal, and guys like Matt Mathai, an original member of the Screaming Eagles, one of D.C. United’s longtime supporters groups, got plenty of putdowns and strange looks.

“The less soccer-friendly crowd used to say, ‘Oh look, it’s a bunch of crazies!’” Mathai recalls. “They had no idea why people would want to stand and sing. Singing is not natural in US sports. People started to laugh. But the fans who were soccer savvy — many of the Latino fans — they all got it.”

MLS’ inaugural season in 1996 marked not only the start of a new league and a new era for the game in the United States (and eventually Canada), but also the beginning of American supporter culture. In many ways, the majority of the clubs weren’t ready for it, and they weren’t sure how to co-exist with it and make it part of the fabric of the league.

But some clubs - D.C. United, the LA Galaxy, and later, the Chicago Fire - embraced this new type of fan. They reached out to them and addressed issues that arose between the supporters and the clubs. And they encouraged the type of passion that created “an atmosphere in which everyone knows they should focus on the game as a sporting event and not as a social outing,” as onetime Fire president Peter Wilt puts it.

“The atmosphere was great,” Mathai remembers of early D.C. matches. “People were pumped up. At that point, Screaming Eagles were on the near side, greeting the players as they came off and on. Later, we told club we wanted to be more visible on TV. We thought that would create more atmosphere and attract more people to the group. They hedged, but then we bought the front row of the midfield section.”

That middle section at RFK Stadium quickly became legendary. It remains the most indelible image of supporters from the early years of MLS: the Screaming Eagles and Barra Brava groups bouncing and making the entire stand sway. Their singing and flags helped to define what it meant to “support your club.”

“D.C. set the bar,” says Evan Whitney, an original member of the Midnight Riders, the earliest New England Revolution supporters group. “The prime location at midfield, the famous bouncing fans — if you were a neutral, you saw that and loved it.”
 

SCORCH

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Ferdinand is a decrepit old fart who isn't even half the player he used to be. What's the fuss? :manny:

He should never have been up for consideration in the first place.

Neville probably gave his blessings too.
 

BOBN

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Talksport saying zamora prob in :deadrose:

group stage KO

spain wont win it and are hot favourites so you can get good odds elsewhere. People like holland at 7s and france at 12s
 
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