#like a footy player

[seastoried]

Given that their composition changes so regularly, any team I currently support may be made up of completely different players, coaches, and administrators in five years. In what sense, then, will I be supporting the same team that I support now?

adam kadlac, the ethics of sports fandom

been thinking about this a lot lately, especially in relation to the growing trend of fans (in a variety team sports) supporting individual players as opposed to teams. what compels us to continue supporting a team even after the youngest player at the first match we watched has retired? what identity, independent of the players who make it up, does a team posses? even after players have been traded, coaches have been hired and fired, and ownership has changed hands, there remains some spirit so foundational to the being of the club that allows us to identify it as the same. this, i believe, is it's grounding in and connection to a particular place.

i find it particularly telling that the practice of supporting individuals over teams is perhaps most prevalent in sports where there is a concerted effort made to scrub away a team's sense of place to make way for sponsor based identities, such as formula 1. the sport's international nature and high team turnover rate (tied to sponsors, of course) likely also plays a part. what, then, is driving this change in other sports?

football has always been a sport where teams have been intrinsically tied to a place. while the player over team support trend has yet to become as prevalent in football as it is in some other sports, it does seem to be creeping in. this could be potentially chalked up to a number of factors. perhaps it's the globalization (read: mostly increased american interest, as the rest of the world has been playing football happily for years) of the sports, introducing fans who have no personal connection to the place a club is from, and therefore lack allegiance to the club. maybe it's the steady increase in foreign ownership of teams, to an extent where this erodes away at fan's visions of a club as a physical manifestation of the spirit of their hometown. perhaps stronger personal branding of players is a part of it; they're no longer simply an agent of the team, but an individual in their own right, worthy of being followed no matter where they go (there is something to be said here about the relationship between personal branding, increased sponsor opportunities, and the fact that having ten individual players shill your product is better than the singular entity that is the team). whatever it is, i do find it a little sad - it renders teams somewhat purposeless, empty husks whose only purpose is to house players, otherwise devoid of value.

[ya-boi-haru]

Honestly:

The sigh of relief I gave when Ulysses mid-fight cutscene came up cause then that meant this was all scripted, Ulysses was supposed to be taking that much damage, meant to be cornered etc

Cause let's just say the line: "Please just crit-hit the fucking skeleton" was used... a couple times...

/lh/silly

[xivdl]

hits him with the babygirl beam

this pic changed me as a man (I am so much more gayer since)

long time no silly footy fanarts I've been doing comms and what not (I'm moving abroad lols) but have this lil smth I did in between before I head back out cheers!

[liesmyth]

@takiki16 tags on my post are too good not to be shared! The context is wild shit that legit happened in IRL football ⚽ that I need the Ted Lasso fandom to be aware of, because it'd make for excellent fic material:

the MANAGERS #the PERSONAL DRAMA#I KNOW that ted lasso is not designed to be an actual realistic show #I KNOW that this whole thing did in fact begin as a way to soft trap Americans into watching the Prem #to the point that JOSE FUCKING MOURINHO ACTUALLY HAD A PART IN THE ORIGINAL NBC AD #I do NOT want to change the vibe of the show at all #(but like…a dramedy about the EPL that REALLY wanted to roast some fuckers would perhaps…NOT look like ted lasso #if they wanted to start with the managers it would just be two middle aged idiots with BOILING beef #who had to be physically restrained from throwing hands every other game and have personally destroyed each others’ marriages

Okay WHO would Roy have managerial beef with. I vote Arteta. Actually as @elizabear suggests, it's funnier if it's one sided

He would also instinctively dislike Rob Edwards of Luton because Jamie once said he's the hottest manager in the EPL. Roy's annoyed and he doesn't know why. (Rob Edwards is very hot)

For an example of managers throwing hands... the Tuchel/Conte handshake

In fact here's a whole compilation of managers throwing hands.

Thank you for bringing up Mourinho! This is his ad, btw. "What do you WANT Ted?" lives in my mind rent-free

After much soul-searching I've decided Roy likes Mou a lot among all the managers he's played for. YES, he is a total cunt BUT

he's really fucking funny about it. Like, really.

he's never met a referee he didn't have beef with but most of all Anthony Taylor (as a Roma fan I have to agree with him on that)

the entire 2005 Chelsea team would've died for him. I've said this before, but there can't be a Frank Lampard in TL if Roy plays the box-to-box midfielder role, so this quote about Mourinho walking into Lampard naked in the shower to give him a pep talk? That's Roy. To me.

I can't even pick a quote among all the shit he's said about all the managers he's played against, but I especially enjoy when he used to be a bitch about Pep and Pep was like "I don't know her." It was like a one-sided crush dating back from their Barca days

#if they wanted it to be about the players the literal sky is the limit. WHATEVER the writers room can come up with#it cannot come CLOSE to the batshit drama that real Sockckckckcer Playahs have amongst each other#also intricate rituals. NOT ENOUGH INTRICATE RITUALS#when Jamie scored that free kick after getting permission to be a prick Dani should have kissed him with tongue

Here's some homoeroticism:

#but TO COME BACK TO OP’S POINT ABOUT ACTUAL GAMEPLAY#I want to see Coach Roy get red carded and have to sit in the stands for the next game cursing and swearing

He'd get, like, 3 red cards a season MINIMUM. Mourinho who. Here's Klopp losing it a bit. Here's Pep being passive aggressive as fuck. Pochettino from 2 days ago. Also from last weekend: De Zerbi's "I don't like 80% of referees in England" he's so right for this.

Manager Roy would get himself red carded the week before Richmond play Chelsea away. Totally accidental. So he doesn't have to have a lil cry about it.

#I want to see what it would take to get Zoreaux sent off#and then they have to stick Bumbercatch in goal and it turns out he has some Hyper Specific Phobia about the situation#he manages to save the team but his coping mechanisms for dealing with Forcible Keeper Phobia make up the comedy B-plot of the episode#

I want CLUB RIVALRY. dunno where Richmond actually physically is but imagine if they had derbies#Ted has to be made to understand that no coach - for THIS game we will not stop till we see BLOOD#Richmond wins but bc they are playing away the home fans actively are tossing crap at them as they celebrate on the pitch#also the sprinklers come on and it’s a bus full of soaked greyhounds on the ride home

They're in West London! Maybe they just fucking hate Fulham. Or Brentford.

Actually, I've thought long and hard about Richmond's derby rivalries. Semi-canon sources say they have a bit of a West London rivalry with Brentford BUT to me it doesn't make much sense because Richmond are supposed to have been mid-table in the Prem for years, top-flight but mediocre. Brentford only made it to the Prem in 2021.

Actually, I've decided that Richmond kind of take the place of QPR for most of their history, except they didn't get relegated when QPR did. This is because 1) it'd be too many London-based clubs otherwise but, more importantly, 2) when Man City won their first title in 2012 with Agueeeeeero!!! that was against Richmond. It's funny, To Me.

Also you know Roy still fucking hates Newcastle from his Sunderland academy days. If his pundit career had lasted longer he'd be having top tier shithousery with Alan Shearer every week about it.

Anyway here's a whole youtube playlist about WILD derbies.

#ALSO BC SUAREZ IS COMING TO MIAMI - BITING INCIDENTS CAN THEY DO THAT

As an Italian I am legally obliged to SAY that if Suarez hadn't bitten Chiellini at the World Cup we would have gone past the group stage because Uruguay scored off a corner they won while Italy were all busy telling the ref that there was a fucking cannibal on the pitch. I don't forgive and I don't forget.

Anyway for context: cannibal Luis Suarez. He's a repeat offender. Someone at Richmond would think it was very funny

[statementlou]

Louis might not be chucking bricks at No. 10, but people are responding like he’s never displayed leftist politics or challenged a government position on anything. He supported demands to the government about a fix for UK touring musician post Brexit and Marcus Rashford’s petition about food insecurity. He fought the police about their social media use in 2018 and criticised the UK government position/support for factory workers in the pandemic. The things he speaks about are usually UK issues and meaningful to him or his family and friends. He’s also most likely to speak when he isn’t working. Also that specific anarchy has a punk anti authoritarian message as well. That statement fits Louis pretty well. He has been a poster boy for not sitting down and shutting up and doing what you’re told since 2012. If he was he probably wouldn’t have a solo career and he definitely wouldn’t have sold out the O2.

I like this point about him speaking out more when he's not working, I think that's a really great and useful observation and makes so much sense. I feel like it makes sense in two ways right now: like first, I don't blame him for not wanting to do things that would jeopardize how beautifully everything is going for him right now after the number of setbacks and troubles he's had to get here, it must feel so precarious. And knowing for a fact that any political statement you make will spawn a dozen tabloid stories and all kinds of outrage is bad enough, but add to that the fact that it's simply impossible to predict which thing will turn into a huge viral mess- it's a lot. And second, he's not just working, he's been on TOUR! I've been around musicians my whole life and one constant is that tour is time outside of normal time and life, it's a bubble, it's only paying attention to right where you are and what's in front of you and the people there with you and everything else is put off and neglected, is for when you get home (and have massive post tour letdown depression and fatigue). I'm not saying he can disconnect with the outside world entirely... but putting everything on pause? I would be surprised if it were any other way, and I would be surprised if he's been following the news and counter news and so forth closely enough to feel comfortable speaking out publicly about anything when it will be so scrutinized and picked apart. I would add to your list supporting the rail strike (something we wouldn't even know about if it hadn't been tossed in as an aside by an interviewer in the print only version of a piece, he didn't post about it or anything) and attending and posting about the BLM protests (not to mention telling people to pirate his stuff come on how punk is that), and I agree he is much more likely to speak out about UK issues which makes sense: most people are most moved by issues that are close to their lives in some way, and it's his brand. And I agree that even though as an anarchist I love talking about what anarchism as a political ideology actually is, the symbol does also have a common meaning in the world as just basically standing for anti-authoritarianism, and Louis as a guy who rejects authority and the status quo is nothing new at all and one of the reasons we love him, and in the last few years I feel like he's been going further in that direction both aesthetically and politically, and we love to see it! Plus he has pretty much always sported this slightly punky aesthetic to some degree, even when he was being dressed up like a little ken doll he snuck in skater looks and indie band tees and so forth (something something it's part of why his fanbase was so primed to love his new sound and it wasn't the risk he feared it was because people were always drawn to him who were already into that aesthetic even when his sound wasn't that yet) it's not like it's just a brand new out of nowhere side of him or something.

[prancingpedris]

Not to wade into Discourse (TM) but the number of club legends that have been pushed out of their clubs in recent years through absolutely no fault of their own just has me so jaded and cynical about the idea of players sticking with a club in general but especially because they 'love' it or 'would be hated by the fans if they left.' While I WANT that to be the case football now is purely a business. While it's more to us as fans this is their job, they are not a family, and they will leave if they get a better offer. It's not a comment on their character if they do imo.

[egglygreg]

Strahliana sketches (Mostly Conell and Ahleri, but look Zhahara’s here too!)

[leclercskiesahead]

Saw these two pics come up back to back on my dash and I just had to

[rolandkaros]

whoever requested the wta footballer au for the tennisblr promptfest...................

[thewrongblues]

my dad is angrier than me atp I'm just so tired

[whitehartlane]

just saw the news that a forest season ticket holder was charged with racially aggravated disorderly conduct and banned after levelling racist abuse at sonny. it’s honestly horrid that this keeps happening season after season and it’s also reported on in such a low profile way in comparison to other such incidents (obviously all incidents like this deserve outrage and proper high profile reporting). sonny’s had to deal with this specific kind of racism being the most visible asian player in football his entire career and i think people underplay not only the effect that must have on his mental health but the fact that stuff like this is institutional and a huge barrier for other asian players to break into the top flight

[mmortis]

i just heard my dad say the words "homophobic slur" and i've never been more fucking shocked in my life

[alexander-arnold66]

life would be so amazing if robbo posted regularly on his insta

[mchiti]

I opened ig for a pretty serious matter (wanted to find again some tea on how much of a fascist carva*al plus some others in the spanish nt are, it's even worse than I thought y'all) and I saw benji's post first thing and look 1) happy for them 2) they are the biggest bi panic nightmare thank you for nothing

[maiteo]

One of them has 4 kids at 27 and the other is hoeing around at 27 💀 no but I swear these footballers are trying to create their own football teams, there’s no other reason you’d want that many kids at such a young age 😭

not the whore allegations shdbsjsj but that’s what I think too like… you’re still young…you have time you don’t have to make all these kids😭 do they know something we don’t

[carlosdropshot]

magnus cort nielsen to uno-x is an unexpected and fascinating move. it looks like uno-x is gonna go for a WT license or at least for regular WCs in big races. feels fitting that denmark should have a big team given the impressive number of elite danish riders in the peloton nowadays. magnus is truly one of my favorite riders and i hope he shines in his new team!