I think it’s a bit unfair…

[madras]

One of my granddads (long dead) used to watch both Newcastle and Sunderland. Not uncommon at the time. Does that notion unsettle you? It's alien to me, but it happened.

 

Not everybody gets so het up about other peoples' behaviour. Live and let live.

i'm not gonna kill anyone over it but i just can not understand it. (like religious belief and supporting a clubto which you have no attachment.....i don't understsnd it)

[NJS]

One of my granddads (long dead) used to watch both Newcastle and Sunderland. Not uncommon at the time. Does that notion unsettle you? It's alien to me, but it happened.

 

Not everybody gets so het up about other peoples' behaviour. Live and let live.

 

My Dad and Uncle did the same and being honest I do find it unsettling - they did really support us but as you say would go and watch them - I think they found modern intensive rivalry to be as strange.

[Guest Alan Shearer 9]

That's nothing, my uncle frequently bummed a mackem on matchdays. An old tradition lost in the modern day "glamorur" of football.

[OzzieMandias]

Ok bad example they only finished 11th last season. Say Catania a team that often struggles or Cagliari. My point was more a team that won't win 90% of games cruising through buying all the best players. With Palermo they have had players like Di Michele bit of a Journeyman but good striker bresciano a good player who they molded. Its all a bout getting an attachment with that club, when you support two massive clubs how can you do that? I mean Catania last season for example had the brilliant Jorge Vargas now sadly at Fiorentina, Zaki at Wigan could be the English comparison or Santa Cruz at Blackburn, players that didn't come with stupid price tags.

 

Staying up is considered as big an achievement for some teams as winning a trophy.

there was me thinking the "other side" would be the equivilent os stockport or rochdale.

 

 

saying that i still can not understand the concept of supporting another football team.

 

I've had a go at getting interested in clubs where I've lived abroad.

 

In Berlin in the late 1980s, I used to go to Blau-Weiss 90 matches with a really good bunch of lads, but it was like playing at supporting a club. It was a bit like that for the Germans I'd go with, too -- Blau-Weiss had rocketed out of nowhere, spent one season in the 1. Bundesliga, and then plummetted back to the lower divisions. They didn't really have any traditional support and, in the second division on the way back down, were getting about 8,000 for a home game in the 70,000-seat Olympia-Stadion. We had a laugh, but it was hard to care very much about what happened on the pitch. I wouldn't be particularly elated if they won, nor very troubled if they didn't, and at at least one game was too pissed to notice anyway.

 

In Lisbon I went to matches at both Sporting and Benfica, and decided I preferred Sporting -- partly to be contrary as the usual thing among English-speaking foreigners in Lisbon is to be a Benfica fan, and partly because I don't like teams that play in red and white. But in a city where every backstreet seems to have a little Sporting supporters' club/bar and a little Benfica supporters' club/bar, I truly had zero connection to either.

 

In Budapest I tried Ferencváros (both the Man U and the Millwall of Hungary -- horrible), Újpest (the "nice" club, but unsupportable because of Fairs Cup history, inconveniently located stadium and violet strip), and MTK (the "Jewish" club, undergoing cash-fuelled revival after acquisition by local retail magnate, but no character). They were all crap; Budapest has too many clubs and too little money. I ended up favouring Vasas, one of the smaller top-flight clubs, because they had a bar behind the goal where you could watch the game in comfort with a beer, and always find a seat....

 

I've given up now. The bottom line is that I just don't really care whether any of these teams wins or loses. It's those wild, insane moodswings that let you know you're watching the team that you truly support.

[abcdefg]

One of my granddads (long dead) used to watch both Newcastle and Sunderland. Not uncommon at the time. Does that notion unsettle you? It's alien to me, but it happened.

 

Not everybody gets so het up about other peoples' behaviour. Live and let live.

 

My Dad and Uncle did the same and being honest I do find it unsettling - they did really support us but as you say would go and watch them - I think they found modern intensive rivalry to be as strange.

 

I think there was just less to do for fun on saturday. I'd go to see some of the non league teams locally, but I can't be bothered, I can watch the early kick-offs in a pub instead.

[madras]

Ok bad example they only finished 11th last season. Say Catania a team that often struggles or Cagliari. My point was more a team that won't win 90% of games cruising through buying all the best players. With Palermo they have had players like Di Michele bit of a Journeyman but good striker bresciano a good player who they molded. Its all a bout getting an attachment with that club, when you support two massive clubs how can you do that? I mean Catania last season for example had the brilliant Jorge Vargas now sadly at Fiorentina, Zaki at Wigan could be the English comparison or Santa Cruz at Blackburn, players that didn't come with stupid price tags.

 

Staying up is considered as big an achievement for some teams as winning a trophy.

there was me thinking the "other side" would be the equivilent os stockport or rochdale.

 

 

saying that i still can not understand the concept of supporting another football team.

 

I've had a go at getting interested in clubs where I've lived abroad.

 

In Berlin in the late 1980s, I used to go to Blau-Weiss 90 matches with a really good bunch of lads, but it was like playing at supporting a club. It was a bit like that for the Germans I'd go with, too -- Blau-Weiss had rocketed out of nowhere, spent one season in the 1. Bundesliga, and then plummetted back to the lower divisions. They didn't really have any traditional support and, in the second division on the way back down, were getting about 8,000 for a home game in the 70,000-seat Olympia-Stadion. We had a laugh, but it was hard to care very much about what happened on the pitch. I wouldn't be particularly elated if they won, nor very troubled if they didn't, and at at least one game was too pissed to notice anyway.

 

In Lisbon I went to matches at both Sporting and Benfica, and decided I preferred Sporting -- partly to be contrary as the usual thing among English-speaking foreigners in Lisbon is to be a Benfica fan, and partly because I don't like teams that play in red and white. But in a city where every backstreet seems to have a little Sporting supporters' club/bar and a little Benfica supporters' club/bar, I truly had zero connection to either.

 

In Budapest I tried Ferencváros (both the Man U and the Millwall of Hungary -- horrible), Újpest (the "nice" club, but unsupportable because of Fairs Cup history, inconveniently located stadium and violet strip), and MTK (the "Jewish" club, undergoing cash-fuelled revival after acquisition by local retail magnate, but no character). They were all crap; Budapest has too many clubs and too little money. I ended up favouring Vasas, one of the smaller top-flight clubs, because they had a bar behind the goal where you could watch the game in comfort with a beer, and always find a seat....

 

I've given up now. The bottom line is that I just don't really care whether any of these teams wins or loses. It's those wild, insane moodswings that let you know you're watching the team that you truly support.

that i can understand. you're there and feel involved. it's part of your environment and you want where you are to be better than all others and a new country gives you a clean slate. the issue i have is those with no tie in picking another club to support aswell.

 

 

and you are aware of vasas's humiliating past aren't you ?

[OzzieMandias]

 

and you are aware of vasas's humiliating past aren't you ?

 

No, actually. Tell me more.

[madras]

 

and you are aware of vasas's humiliating past aren't you ?

 

No, actually. Tell me more.

the only club the mackems ever beat in europe

[OzzieMandias]

[OzzieMandias]

I'd forgotten that. Hell, when I was writing the long post above, I even had to pause for a second to remember their name. Hungarians were always amazed when I said I liked Vasas, and asked why. I told them it was because I liked a certain sparky midfielder called Zoltán Váci, and then they'd usually smile and say they liked this player too.

[maze]

I may be wrong, but it feels to me like the majority of local supporters don't really accept foreign supporters. Maybe this is something that has been perpetuated in the media and isn't strictly true. However, on my first matchday in SJP when I went to the toilets, a number of supporters started to piss on me just because I was wearing a Man U top. Surely if we can't accept people from outside the club will spiral back down and become a smaller enterprise, albeit still with the history and acheivements of 'a big club', or one bigger than most in England. It feels to me like some fans would like that, maybe the majority.

 

You were wearing a man u top to a toon game??

 

 

I had Chelsea shorts on though? It is no way to treat a man in front of his wife in a public toilet. Excuse my bad English I am from Mumbai, it is hard to speak here.

 

Surely this has got to be a joke?  I'm not saying it's OK to have people pissing on you, but to me it sounds like you ask for some sort of reaction when you turn up at SJP in a man utd shirt combined with a chelski shorts. It's a pretty funny outfit to wear in the first place

 

And tbh your situation has little to do with you the fact that you are a foreign supporter, different skin color etc. I'd be a fool to attend the West Ham - Newcastle match in April wearing my toon kit among the WHU fans or even show up with the Toon Army wearing a sunderland shirt. (god forbid that, what's sunderland's kit anyway? Do they have any at all? )

 

GOLD.

 

I was following this thread and maze was making a really good point, everything he was saying was making perfect sense, the minute he posted this post i started to believe he might be wrong.

 

Strange. Because this guy followed it up by saying:

 

I do not think it is funny for you to laugh. I cannot go in public toilet ever since because I wet myself with fear. Only glad you can buy bottles of water at the game now.

 

If however you find him to be serious, and IF he in fact is serious, then I think it's still strange to bring this up in this particular thread, because:

 

quote author=Golden Glory link=topic=56648.msg1515067#msg1515067 date=1222629102]

On the topic of other teams shirts in a complete different stadium, every other f***ing week at Vicarage Road, you see some little fuckers wearing Chelsea/Arsenal/Manure tops. I always see one little (or not so little, the most obese 10 year old I've ever seen)  s*** with a Manure shirt with Rooney 10 on the back, walking up and down the front of the stand. Little t*** should stay at home and not watch Watford, plastic little t***.

 

I also was going to make a joke about Saracens kits being worn at the Vic when it's a complete different sport, but an actual truthful anecdote is much better. Oh, and the linesman was wearing a Reading kit the other week, w*****.

 

Of this you can clearly understand that other people do the same at other stadiums, but I doubt people are mind-readers and attack someone just because they are foreigner. Now that would be racism. And this thread was not created to discuss racism. In fact Alan Shearer 9 could have been from England or UK for that matter, and he could still have ended up in that situation.  Noww, I'm not defending rude and bad things to against eash other at all. The way he brought it up with his replies just sounded like he was making a joke about it like.. "I was wearing a man utd top sitting with the home fans at SJP" .... people respond... and he follows it up by saying "I was also wearing Chelsea shorts" ... eeeh OK....

 

Thing is though, whether you're a foreigner or not (really doesn't matter) you have to be cautious. Hopefully most of the hooligan culture is gone, but the game is still struggling wih racism and people that lose control during the match. Dressing yourself up with other teams kit is a risky business. That is risky other places as well, not just in England, and risky at other clubs than Newcastle as well.

 

We could easily discuss this till we die. As much as fighting racism and bullies is important, the whole point with this thread goes a long the lines of what musika,kaizero et al. has been writing.  So, I'm sorry that you think I'm wrong, but you are entitled to think whatever you like.

[LooneyToonArmy]

Ok bad example they only finished 11th last season. Say Catania a team that often struggles or Cagliari. My point was more a team that won't win 90% of games cruising through buying all the best players. With Palermo they have had players like Di Michele bit of a Journeyman but good striker bresciano a good player who they molded. Its all a bout getting an attachment with that club, when you support two massive clubs how can you do that? I mean Catania last season for example had the brilliant Jorge Vargas now sadly at Fiorentina, Zaki at Wigan could be the English comparison or Santa Cruz at Blackburn, players that didn't come with stupid price tags.

 

surely you mean Juan Vargas (Jorge Vargas plays for another Italian team).......brilliant player  mind and he was linked with us last season when he was at Catania but nowt came of it sadly.

[pedro111]

I havent read the whole thread so it might not have been mentioned but one thing I think maybe *some* Foreign fans might not get is British 'banter'.  What is said on here in jest is maybe taken as an insult.

 

Where I work there are blokes from all over the UK and even some Aussies aswell.

 

Since this whole carry on we have labled all the blokes from the London area the 'Cockney Mafia'.  They dont take offence, they just laugh, have a go back at us "Geordie [inset expletive here]" and even play up to it!

 

The jocks get it ripped out of them, so too the Aussies, anyones fair game. Cockney this, Jock that, Brummie so and so............... are regularly used in dialouge between us. It happens all day every day really, so I guess some people bring it on here and it leads to miss understanding.

 

I have nothing but respect for our foreign fans, in fact I was sat near a bloke who had came from Winnepeg Canada especially for the Blackburn game the other day, I was amazed and embarrased at our shit state all at the same time. Still made him welcome though.

 

 

[Guest Heneage]

Ok bad example they only finished 11th last season. Say Catania a team that often struggles or Cagliari. My point was more a team that won't win 90% of games cruising through buying all the best players. With Palermo they have had players like Di Michele bit of a Journeyman but good striker bresciano a good player who they molded. Its all a bout getting an attachment with that club, when you support two massive clubs how can you do that? I mean Catania last season for example had the brilliant Jorge Vargas now sadly at Fiorentina, Zaki at Wigan could be the English comparison or Santa Cruz at Blackburn, players that didn't come with stupid price tags.

 

surely you mean Juan Vargas (Jorge Vargas plays for another Italian team).......brilliant player  mind and he was linked with us last season when he was at Catania but nowt came of it sadly.

ahah yes sorry I meant Juan.

[themanupstairs]

 

The same way the local fans think it's rich of foreign fans to give their opinion on anything NUFC, I also think (As a foreign fan) it's quite a bit rich of the locals to tell me who to support. No I wasn't born in Newcastle, and have no Geordie parentage or heritage whatsoever, but I chose to support this club when I was 13, and haven't looked back since. Surely you can't question any 13 yr old's decision to support a team, can you? The club caught my eye in between the promotion season and first season back in the top flight. There was definitely an element about it that attracted a 13 yr old who was still learning about football. I will not make any apologies for that, and I suspect most of our foreign fans relate in the same way.

 

I love it though when some of the local mongs come on here telling us to fuck off support another club, and I love the fact that it pisses them that I just simply won't