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jamesv-t · 4 years

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I follow too many football teams

Decided to sit down and compile a list of all the various football teams I'm following at the moment, across different leagues and countries, and note the reason I started supporting them as well as the extent to which I follow. I was surprised.

Arsenal WFC: started following the club on 4th July 2018, when they signed my favourite footballer, Tabea Kemme. Bought a season ticket and attended as many games as my work pattern would allow; from the first game I was amazed by Dutch striker Vivianne Miedema, the best forward I'd seen play since Robert Taylor's purple patch in 1999. Despite missing all 4 of Tabea's appearances for the club, I bought a shirt with her name and number on it which I've worn to every game possible, home and away. The last match I saw in person was a 4-0 win at Brighton back in January (easier to get to than home games, so of course I'd go) during which I realised that despite Tabbi's injury worries, I was in deep enough to care about the other players. This turned out to be prescient as two days later she retired from playing. Thanks to the FA Player, I can watch (almost) every match streamed live to my tablet.

Matches seen: 5 home, 5 away (Lewes, Brighton [Amex], Crawley, Spurs [new White Hart Lane], Brighton)

Shirts: 1 - 2018/2019 home shirt with Kemme 22 on the back.

Gillingham FC (mens): Where it all began. Attended my first game against Doncaster Rovers in April 1995, taken by my dad and granddad. The Gills won 4-2, my younger brother and I had room enough to chase each other around the terrace. Since then I've experienced nauseating lows, dizzying highs, and creamy middles. As of 21st May 2019 my support for the club has been on hold - they appointed Steve Evans - a man who had previously convicted of tax evasion and falsifying accounts, a man who had previously sought to incite Gillingham staff and players whenever his teams played against the Gills, and an all round nasty piece of work - as manager of the first team. I could not in good conscience support a side managed by him, in person or remotely, so I packed away my shirts/scarf/badges, muted the club's social media accounts, and my Saturday afternoons were a lot more fun as a result. He's still at the club, they're currently fourth in the League One table, but this summer they cut loose the associated women's side, so I don't know if I'll ever go back.

Matches attended: bloody loads. In the three figures, easily. Had a season ticket one year. Attended at least 1/3 of all games - home and away - in the promotion season linked above. Been going at least once a season for the past 20-odd years, mostly more than that. Away games at Crawley a few times (making it my joint second most visited stadium, apart from Priestfield and tied with Meadow Park), once at Spurs (old White Hart Lane), West Brom, Millwall (that was fun, got the tickets through work, ended up with the home fans, Gillingham got a last minute winner that we couldn't celebrate), Charlton twice, a reserve game at Leighton Orient, the above linked game against Wycombe when we went down, strangely not Brighton though despite living here for nearly 10 years.

Shirts: had plenty over the years. I've still got the shirt we got promoted in with Thomson 27 on the back, signed by a number of the squad, somewhere. Currently I only have two - the 2009 promotion shirt because it looks pretty good, and the 2011 home shirt because of fond Football Manager memories!

Borussia Dortmund (mens): Over a decade ago I started a relationship with a German woman. In the getting to know you stage, I asked her what her nearest Bundesliga* club was. (My small talk has since improved. Slightly.) She replied "Dortmund", and I started following the club. I'm not saying that I'm responsible for the team's subsequent uptick in form - they won the league two seasons running after I visited the ground, adding the Pokal (cup) in the second season as well - but I'm not not saying that either. The availability of streams plus the free-flowing, attacking football made them an easy follow, especially at a time when Gillingham went 35 games without an away win in all competitions. I look forward to the club starting up a women's side next season, especially as they're starting from the bottom rather than expecting to be parachuted into the Frauen Bundesliga.

Matches: just the one so far in person, an entertaining 2-3 loss to Wolfsburg in December 2012.

Shirts: had a 2004 home shirt that was horrible material, very plasticky. Also have a really comfortable and stylish 2012 away shirt that I couldn't wear for a few years due to it having Hummels' name on - thankfully he's returned from his Bayern defection now. A Munich fan who stayed with us a couple of years ago found the whole thing hilarious.

*I'm glad I specified the country, as while she grew up nearly 100km from the Westfalonstadion, she was only 20km from FC Twente - but it was complicated enough explaining to people in the early days why I was following a German team, and I think trying to tell them I was following a Dutch side due to my German partner might've been far too much!

BSG Chemie Leipzig (mens): Dortmund aren't the only German side I've hitched my wagon to, but they're the most high profile. Faced with an indefinite period of time with nothing to do during lockdown, and growing tired of my other FM careers, I set about giving myself a challenge. Due to the high praise dished out by the media to Red Bull Leipzig, a team funded by the energy drink conglomerate who bought their way up the league, I decided my challenge would be to - in the words of Sir Alex Ferguson - "knock them off their f**king perch. I wanted to make another team the biggest side in Leipzig. Scouting around the Wikipedia page for the city, and aided by this thoroughly informative Reddit post, I settled on Chemie due to their political leanings and colour scheme. Six real-life months and a dozen fictional seasons into the career, I'm one Bundesliga and one Pokal away from equalling the energy drink's trophy haul. I've taken an interest in the real life side as well, languishing away in the fifth tier of German football (an unholy hell of regional leagues and village sides).

Matches: not yet. One day I'll stand on the terrace of the Alfred-Kunze-Sportpark, Freiberger in hand, cheering on the side. But the raging pandemic that brought me to start the career is, ironically, preventing me from properly indulging.

Shirts: none, as I rarely wear football shirts these days. But this t-shirt is pretty cool.

Gillingham WFC: Simple thing here - when the side were cut adrift from the parent men's club as part of a cost-saving measure in the summer, I decided to go with the team who were not managed by an odious berk. I'm kooky like that.

Matches: one so far, a pre-season friendly away at Lewes last summer. I was the lone Gills fan. There were more dogs supporting the home side than humans cheering on the away team.

Shirts: none, as the club have switched to red after no longer being under the men's umbrella.

Valur (women's team): Some of these have deep, meaningful reasons behind my follow of them. Others, less so. In the early part of 2019 a friend of mine and his Czech girlfriend moved to Reykjavik to live for a bit. We visited them and were surprised to see floodlights from their balcony. Their flat overlooked a football ground, where Valur play, and so it was a simple thing to follow their side to feel closer to Paul and Barbora. It was weird seeing Valur's main striker, Elin Metta, posting Insta stories of playing with the same friendly cat that Paul does!

Matches: just the one streamed so far, due to a dearth of matches available online, but Valur won!

Shirts: christ don't give me ideas.

ACF Fiorentina Femminile: And if you thought that was a tenuous reason...last month we took a tour around Italy, stopping in Rome, Florence, Bologna and Venice. I wanted to get something football related to remember the trip by. Venice was out - I was going to the Venezia store anyway to pick up a few things for a mate who had guided them to glory on Football Manager, and didn't want to tread on his toes. Rome was unsuccessful - Lazio's kits have been cool in the past, but their right-wing fans aren't for me, and Roma had some lovely coloured merch but nothing that grabbed me. A surprise heavy shower sent us scurrying into the Fiorentina club shop, a place I'd earmarked to visit anyway, and a lovely flattering jacket jumped off the shelf at me. (It helped that it was reduced from €100 to €30!) Why the women's side over the men's? Women's football is just much more fun!

Matches: just a 3-1 loss to Sassuolo a few weeks ago. Who loses to a Phil Collins single?!

Shirts: no shirts, but a sexy jacket.

Ashwood City FC (mens, fictional): Ashwood City are Kent's only Premier League side. One of the founder members of the Football League, they've never been relegated from the Premier League. They're also fictional, the main subject of football podcast The Offensive. Now in its third season, it's been a weekly highlight, weaving current football events into an ongoing story arc. It's occasionally sweary, frequently hilarious, and clearly written by someone who's lived in Kent judging by the accurate jabs at Kentish people/Gillingham! It also used an entire episode as set-up for a reference to the 1992 Whitney Houston/Kevin Costner film The Bodyguard, which still frequently makes me chuckle at random moments.

Matches: tricky, as they don't exist. Like Steve Evans' moral compass.

Shirts: nope.

#football

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365footballorg-blog · 6 years

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Tenorio: Inside the ongoing roster build at LAFC with GM John Thorrington

Jeff Swinger-USA TODAY Sports

March 29, 201812:20PM EDT

Inside the front office at LAFC, the leaders of Major League Soccer’s newest expansion club call it their decision-making “filter.”

From the moment the blank canvas first started to fill out with names of prospective players, LAFC general manager John Thorrington and the club’s leaders tried to distill the criteria they sought in their roster build down to a formula, of sorts.

They looked for specific on- and off-field qualities at each position. They worked out exactly how much they were willing to spend at each spot. They whittled the profiles down as narrowly as possible. Then they started to search and build.

Ahead of the club’s first crosstown clash with the LA Galaxy on Saturday (3 pm ET | FOX; MLS LIVE on DAZN and TVAS2 in Canada), LAFC put the final big piece of its expansion roster in place this week.

Portuguese midfielder Andre Horta was signed as the team’s third Designated Player on a transfer from Benfica for a reported $ 7 million fee. The transfer was not an easy one to get over the finish line; there were several hoops to jump through to get it finalized. Even now, the player’s loan to SC Braga complicates the deal, with LAFC unsure when their newest signing will actually join the club.

But LAFC leaders knew Horta fit every quality they sought in that final DP spot, and so they stayed patient to complete the roster in the way that decision-making filter determined was best.

Andre Horta (left) is one of the last major pieces of LAFC’s roster build. | Action Images / Reuters

It was the right player to finish off a roster build that has exceeded expectations, albeit just two games into the expansion campaign. There is still room to add more if needed – LAFC will have two senior rosters spots remaining once Horta is officially added, as well as five reserve and supplemental spots – but the core is now in place.

“For us, we definitely trust in our process and that involves player identification and recruitment and negotiation and all the necessary steps,” Thorrington told MLSsoccer.com. “You learn quickly that these negotiations are never linear. You don’t get one step closer with each conversation and there are things outside your control that could prove to be obstacles. That was certainly the case with [Horta] and with all our DPs and players across the roster. We were able to get around every obstacle that was put in the way.”

Horta also fit a major theme in LAFC’s expansion roster: diversity.

LAFC wanted players with different experiences and from different cultures, in early stages of their career and in the latter portions of their playing days. They signed two young DPs, one from South America (Diego Rossi) and another from Europe (Horta), both of whom had plenty of suitors. They inked a superstar in Carlos Vela that sent a message about ambition. In the foreign market, they added prospects like Eduard Atuesta and veterans like Omar Gaber.

They also scouted diligently in the domestic market to find players. LAFC identified starters in the expansion draft (Tyler Miller, Latif Blessing, Marcos Ureña), free agency (Steven Beitashour), trades (Laurent Ciman, Benny Feilhaber), SuperDraft (Joao Moutinho) and lower divisions (Mark-Anthony Kaye, Dejan Jakovic).

Thorrington said the hope was that those experiences would mesh well into their vision for a successful roster in MLS.

“To be able to secure [Vela] as our first signature player over the summer, it was a guy Bob [Bradley] and I both agreed would be a great start as a team builder,” Thorrington said. “As each piece of the puzzle goes into place, it helps inform secondary and tertiary pieces we build around. If you look around at how we built the roster, it was a very multifaceted approach consistent with what type of things we want in players. … You don’t get every single one right, but the hope is you get more right than wrong.”

So far, there’s been a bit more that’s gone right.

LAFC opened the season with two wins, both on the road, against Western Conference contenders. They’ll look to continue that perfect record against an LA Galaxy team that recently added superstar striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic.

Bob Bradley has found early success on his return to MLS sidelines. | USA Today Images

Thorrington praised Bradley’s ability to communicate how he wants the team to play and what he wants the identity to be about. The team has taken on that message quickly and the results have followed. For an expansion team that is bringing 23 new players together for the first time, it’s been surprisingly efficient, though there will inevitably be rough patches.

Even with the early success, LAFC understand they have a difficult task when it comes to competing with the LA Galaxy, who have won five titles in the first 22 seasons of MLS. Though the Galaxy are coming off of their worst season in history, the club can still attract players like Ibrahimovic, who can easily shift the narrative and steal the headlines.

With a downtown stadium set to open soon, however, and with Bradley at the helm, the hope at LAFC is that this season begins a new era of top-level soccer in LA.

“We have been very diligent and focused on what we are about and that doesn’t change [after Zlatan],” Thorrington said. “We are respectful that the Galaxy have been, results-wise, the most successful club over the first 20 years of MLS and we feel we are laying the foundation not just in the short-term, but the medium- and long-term, to be the most successful club of the next 20 years.

“What you see is there is an appetite for what we’re doing. We’ve been amazed from the outset of joining [MLS] that we sold the stadium out without even having a coach or a player yet. … It’s incredible to see the traction we’ve had in the market. We have such a passionate fan base, incredible traveling support, our fans were at academy games this weekend at StubHub Center. They know they are every bit as involved as the ownership, the players, the staff. They are helping create the story with us.”

Where that story goes remains to be seen. But LAFC are confident its decision-making filters and formulas will yield a club that can compete both in its market and outside of it.

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Tenorio: Inside the ongoing roster build at LAFC with GM John Thorrington was originally published on 365 Football

#build #Inside #John #LAFC #ongoing #roster #Tenorio #Thorrington

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365footballorg-blog · 6 years

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Colorado finalizing deal for TAM striker, according to GM Padraig Smith

Getty Images

March 8, 20184:01PM EST

The Colorado Rapids are close to signing another striker using Targeted Allocation Money, club executive VP and GM Padraig Smith told MLSsoccer.com Wednesday night.

“We’re looking to add somebody in this window,” he said. “We’ve got a target in mind, we feel like we’re close to finalizing that, so if things go the way we want over the next couple of days we should be adding one final piece to the roster, another attacker, a striker.”

The potential addition would be the 13th new player added by Colorado this winter, third most in the league behind expansion outfit LAFC and Orlando, who signed 14 new players for 2018.

Accelerated by the hiring of new head coach Anthony Hudson, the offseason overhaul was mainly designed to turn the Rapids into a more potent attacking outfit. Colorado tied for last in MLS with just 31 goals in 2017; they haven’t scored more than 40 goals or finished better than the bottom-two in scoring since 2014.

Smith, who has been with the Rapids since January 2015 and was promoted from interim GM to the full-time role in January, doesn’t need to be reminded about those struggles. He and fellow club executive Wayne Brant wrote about them at length last summer after the dismissal of former head coach Pablo Mastroeni in a Denver Post op-ed titled “The Rapids Way.” The piece highlighted the need for Colorado to sign “players whose first instinct is to drive forward, to seek out the line-breaking pass and to take on” their defender while building a system that allows “attacking players more freedom.”

Colorado didn’t show many of those qualities in their 2-0 aggregate defeat to Toronto FC in the CONCACAF Champions League Round of 16, but it’s very early – and Smith thinks the Rapids are on the right track ahead of their MLS opener at New England on Saturday (1:30 pm ET | MLS LIVE; on DAZN).

The Rapids, who were without Designated Player Shkelzen Gashi and 2017 TAM signing Stefan Aigner against TFC due to injury, used TAM to acquire midfielder Jack Price and forward Joe Mason from English Championship club Wolverhampton in preseason. They added Swedish midfielder Johan Blomberg in November and later signed American wingback Edgar Castillo and defenders Danny Wilson and Tommy Smith. All six should play big minutes in Hudson’s 3-5-2 this year, and Smith sees each of them – defenders included – helping Colorado’s attack through better buildup play.

“We’re very well aware that our attack hasn’t been good enough over the past number of years,” Smith said. “I think that stems not just from the strikers, but it also stems from our ability to control the flow and tempo of the game, advance the ball through the various phases of play and I think we’ll certainly be helped in that regard with the addition of Danny Wilson, Tommy Smith, Jack Price, who controls games so well and we think is going to be a key addition.”

But buildup play doesn’t mean much if you don’t have strikers that can finish consistently. Even with the addition of Mason, who scored just seven league goals in his last two-and-a-half seasons in England, Colorado’s forward corps is thin. The club currently have Mason, Dominique Badji, Jack McBean and rookie Niki Jackson as their pure forwards, though Gashi and Aigner are also capable of playing up top. None of their full-time forwards have ever scored more than nine goals in a single season as a pro, though Badji did hit that mark last year, his third season in MLS, after scoring six the year before.

That makes the potential new striker extra important, especially considering Colorado, who Smith said will spend a significant portion of their discretionary TAM, don’t plan on adding a third DP this year to join Gashi and goalkeeper Tim Howard.

“We’ve brought in Joe Mason and we are looking to add another piece, like I mentioned,” Smith said. “We want to become a more attacking team. We want to be a team that goes out and looks to win every single game.”

Smith didn’t provide details on where the new addition is coming from, but the Rapids took a distinctly British turn this winter. Four of the six signings brought in this offseason have come from the England or Scotland, setting them apart from the many clubs around the league looking to Central and South America for their new signings. It may not match where most of the MLS went this winter, but the Rapids’ approach makes sense considering the backgrounds of the Irish Smith and English Hudson.

“Everything comes back to finding the best player available,” Smith said. “One of the things we’re quite keen on is building our scouting network out and ensuring we have contacts that span the globe so that we can continue to go out there and target the best available player for the Colorado Rapids. I think right now though, there’s no doubt certainly with my background, with my network it is stronger in Europe. We have more people there that we know and trust, we have a better scouting system there.”

The Rapids are high on their European additions, trusting them to play a major role on the field and in the locker room for a squad that Smith thinks is vastly deeper and more talented than it was at this point last year. They may not fully realize “The Rapids Way” just yet, but Smith feels they’re now on the right path.

“It is a process, there’s no doubt about that. But I think we’ve gone out of our way to really overhaul a huge part of the squad so that we have the ability to change things around as quickly as possible,” Smith said.

“It will take time for everything to gel, but… I like to think that our fans and the public will see changes right away that will continue to gel over the course of the season,” he added later. “For sure, for us we want to be a playoff team, we want to be in there competing for titles every year.”

MLSsoccer.com News

Colorado finalizing deal for TAM striker, according to GM Padraig Smith was originally published on 365 Football

#according #Colorado #deal #finalizing #Padraig #Smith #striker

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