Offside Unleashed: Reflections on Kit Bonding, Global Brands, and Loving Your Home Team

(Note: For the record, I would like to point out that this particular Offside Unleashed post is entirely G rated and contains no mention of any body parts whatsoever. And you didn’t think I could do it.)

Back in Spring of 2007, I was helping to run a huge kiddie-type event unrelated to soccer. There was a child there, maybe eight years old, who was wearing a Ronaldinho Barcelona jersey. Before the day was done, I had managed to corner this poor kid and quiz him about about how he thought Lilian Thuram was fitting into their backline. Just because I couldn’t help myself.

Of course, he had never heard of Thuram. He’d barely heard of Ronaldinho. (Did I mention he was eight?)

Sometimes I’m amazed they allow me out in public.

But that’s the power of a jersey, isn’t it? You see one from a club/player you love, your heart gives a happy little zing, and suddenly you’re bonded to a complete stranger.

In the last couple of years, I’ve seen an Henry jersey on a ferry in Washington state. Zidane jerseys at games in Los Angeles, Seattle and Vancouver, Canada. (Oh, and Paris. That too.) Heard about a Beckham jersey in Tokyo. Saw a Crespo, a Pirlo, a Del Piero, a Totti, several Beckhams, plus generic Celtic, Marseille, ManU and Italy shirts, all at a US Open Cup game — Seattle vs. Kansas City. And saw approximately a gazillion Liverpool jerseys in Dublin. (Dublin folks? What’s up with that?)

This kind of thing isn’t new, of course, but it’s a lot more prevalent now, in the age of satellite broadcasts and their illegitimate siblings, the footy pirate streams — the ones that let anybody with a modem watch pretty much any game from around the world. It’s no longer unusual for somebody living in New York or London or Cape Town to fall in love with a club in Toronto or Barcelona or Istanbul.

Downside? Perhaps. Awhile back I read a story in another blog by someone who’d been on a Tube ride in London, eavesdropping on a conversation between a Londoner and an American on the topic of football. All was going well until the American said something along the lines of, “I’ve been big Arsenal fan, but I’m thinking about switching to Manchester United.”

The Brit, of course, gave the man the kind of look generally reserved for someone who has just announced a fondness for puppies on toast. Conversation over.

For somebody living 5000 miles from the action of both teams, who probably catches the majority of matches on Fox Soccer or Setanta, I’m sure that didn’t seem like an odd statement. For somebody living in the heart of Arsenal-town, though? Blasphemy. Such is the confusion created by global branding.

Not that this kind of displeasure will have any effect. These football “global brands” are here to stay — both because following multiple clubs from around the world is really, really fun, and also because the economic viability of the larger football clubs requires it. (Or, in plain English: Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi need your money — yes, you there, up in Schenectedy — to survive.)

And most of me loves this. I love dragging myself out of bed on a Saturday morning, brewing up a pot of coffee, and curling up on the couch to watch whatever Ligue 1 match TV5Monde is serving up in any given week. I love watching so much UEFA Champions League football during the group stages that it feels like my eyeballs are going to fall out. I love following the highs and lows and dramas of clubs from around the world at (let’s be honest here) a quality level I couldn’t get if I followed only the game at home.

Yet sometimes I wonder if something doesn’t get lost as more and more people from around the world follow only the best of the best of the best. Isn’t there something also to be learned from loving the home team, year after year? From going to the games each week, and learning your own supporters’ chants, and knowing that the season ticket holder who sits behind you tends to get overenthusiastic late in the game and will accidentally kick the back of your seat and spill his beer?

Our editor Daryl is back home in the West Midlands for the holidays. He mentioned in passing that one of the things he did on his first weekend back was go see his home club, the Wolverhampton Wanderers, who are currently sitting top of the Championship. And of course, to welcome him back, they lost the match. Which is what the teams of our heart tend to do, as often as not. And yet, even though he no longer lives nearby, and even though they lost, they remain his home club — the club of his heart.

I found myself reflecting on this after we talked. About how — like your mother’s vegetable soup and your aunt’s too-tight hugs — the games of your home side are a signal to your soul that you have, indeed, at last, arrived back home.

And all the SuperClubs’ Champions League games in the world can’t replace that.

So by all means, absolutely, we should go ahead and wear our favorite player jerseys and watch all of the worldwide games we want via whatever means we can.

But it’s probably not a bad thing to remember, in this age of globalization, that there’s also great joy to be had in coming home.

Offside Unleashed is a new feature here at The Offside, where we bloggers are allowed to roam untethered around whatever territory we choose to venture into, provided we touch base back at the beautiful game occasionally. Expect at least one more G-rated post as Laurie attempts to convince Chris and Daryl that they, too, can do this without tainting their good names.

And once that happens? THEN we’ll discuss the theft of the Diego Maradona’s fake private parts.

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Category: World Football