Liverpool FC Forum

[PabloAimar]

But then again, I don't live in Liverpool, so you may discredit this statement if you so wish.

mr 'cisse is going to get you' has been misunderstood... twice now!

[skipper]

I've supported liverpool since the beginning of the 2003-2004 season.  Sure I'm a new fan, but arent we all at some point?  I live in the US where english football isn't exactly the popular sport, but I try my best to go on websites and check for any signs of liverpool and the premiership on tv.  I remember spending lots of time trying to figure out the results we needed to secure a 4th place finish that season.  I was very happy that we finished above newcastle for 4th and a champions league spot.  I used to watch football when I was little, but I strayed away from it some. 

In 2003 when my friends would go "I love real madrid or I love man u ", I just didnt think that those teams were likable.  I preferred liverpool because it was way more like a family rather than 11 individuals on the pitch and false fans.  Since that point, I have learned much more about lfc present and past.  I have become a much much bigger fan since 2003.  I became a liverpool fan when we werent at the top, and I will remain a liverpool fan.

I am young and I know I'll have opportunities to go to england when I'm older.  Im very envious of fans who have supported the club since the 70's.  I am also very envious of fans who go to lfc matches now.  But I know I will always support this club and it wont be long before I'll get to visit the Kop.  If people dont believe I'll always support lfc, then too bad because I know what my heart feels and others dont.

Even if we struggle in the future, I'll still support lfc because I've never felt this devoted to a club before.  Im loyal and I dont change teams for glory hunting.  My favorite teams in other sports struggle sometimes, but I dont change favorite teams.  Liverpool wont be any different.  Im devoted to this club no matter what other people think.

[El Nino_#9]

good for you!

[Red_Rob]

It's only natural that success brings in more fans home and abroad. A champions league win obviously gives a team mass exposure around the world even though many countries get English football anyway. Many youngsters tend to support the team of the moment and let's hope we can be that team again for years to come.

I am sure the way we won the trophy contributed to the amount of new fans as everyone loves an underdog who defied the odds in the latter stages

The number of spanish fans supporting Liverpool, even as a second team, must have started to grow since the Rafalution began and the champions league run must have got us many more fans. Especially beating an Italian side in the final who's style of play they hate and are the complete opposite of - I am sure we had the whole of Spain cheering us on.

Likewise in Poland with Dudek's antics and so..

[XSD]

They could be glory hunters, or they could have been put under the spell of lfc when watching the greatest cup final comeback of all time.

[JBG]

There will always be an element who drift from one club to the other and frankly, I don't consider these people "supporters".

One of my mates was a lifelong Spurs fan before switching to Arsenal two or three years ago. He has zero credibility as a football supporter in my view.

I'm an OOTER and like practically all OOTERS, I started supporting Liverpool at a very young age as the club were successful to one degree or another when I first got interested in football as a nipper. Also, I'm from Ireland and when I began to follow football, it was at an extremely low ebb in Ireland in the early 1980s, and while the domestic teams are now going gradually improving, my town didn't have a full time football team when I began to follow sport, and in any event, football was a very distant third locally to indigenous Irish sport like hurling and Gaelic football. English football was very popular and when I was a kid, Liverpool, Everton, Manchester UTD and Spurs were the most popular clubs in Ireland.

There has always been a very strong link between Ireland and the Merseyside clubs and Manchester UTD, as all three clubs have very strong Irish links going back generations.

For example, there is a small but not insubstantial core of Everton supporters in Ireland and these guys are as true supporters as those only 80 miles across the water in Merseyside. Christ, many of 'em are as bitter as the Merseyside variety.

I remember in the 1980s Man UTD were popular, but no more popular than say Liverpool are today. When Man UTD became successful after 1993, suddenly thousands of "life long" Man UTD fans started to come out of the wood work, and my own suspicions were that many of these "fans" were previously Liverpool "supporters".

I also recall Blackburn going through a brief period of popularity and I remember drinking in a Dublin pub in 1995 and seeing about 4 guys in there with blue and white shirts on. Drinking in the same pub 10 years on I see plenty of blue Chelsea tops but alas, no Blackburn jerseys.

I think that the Irish are generally good football supporters, though, as we get the same amount of English football exposure as the English themselves, given the foothold that the English media have in the country and the traditional cultural links between English football and Ireland. There are plenty of Irish Liverpool fans who stuck with the club through the difficult times of the 1990s and a large contingent of Irish fans make the weekly journey over to England to watch Liverpool home and away. Dublin probably has the largest contingent of Liverpool fans outside of Liverpool.

I hope people won't pick this up wrong but I'm slightly dubious about the merits of Liverpool "supporters" from further afield, particularly in the Far East and in the USA, where football does not have the same cultural traditions as in Europe and is a relatively recent phenomenom. Thats not to say that all Asian or American supporters are fly-by-night "fans" who either have jumped ship from Man UTD or will soon jump ship to Chelsea (and they are not given that we have plenty of Asian and American fans on this website who genuinely support the club), but I suspect that the extra 10million "supporters" would struggle to name 15 current Liverpool players, let alone know who Shankly was, let along Ronnie Moran or Gary Gillespie. If we had a desperate season next year and won nothing, I'd imagine the same survey would halve our supprt base once more.

I'm a supporter now for more than 20 years, have been to games and genuinely like the city of Liverpool, but as an OOTER I can put my hand on my heart and honestly say that as much as I love the club, and I do love it, I'll never be lucky enough to claim that I  have Liverpool in the blood and there is a tiny amount of magic that Scousers have that the rest of us OOTERS will never have.

I enjoyed Istanbul as much as anybody, but I watched the homecoming on telly and if I'm honest with myself, the homecoming was between the scousers and the club, and nobody else. It was their moment, and while I would have given anything to have been in Liverpool for the home coming, a tiny part of me told me that it wouldn't have been right.

[Ciggy]

Good post that JBG and I love our Irish fans I think they are great I always have a great time with them get drunk have a sing song, not just Liverpool songs but irish ones aswell.
But your last comment on the parade well everyone was welcome and it was out of this world and its a shame you didnt come over as it was fantastic.
I watched the game with loads of irish and at half time I had this irish lad about 15 in my arms he was just devistated me and him where crying, but I was just sayin, were gona win lad were gona win 4-3, but he was inconsolable. Danced the night away after the parade with loads of Irish    Ciggy had a ball  

[policy]

I respect the devotion that "true supporters" like CGGY have for their team. Such devotion lets me understand why she guards the club so jealously from those who are just along for the ride.

However, I can never be that kind of a fan for anything. I am a sort of a hedonist looking for pleasure and sharing pleasure in the success of those who work hard and accomplish their goals. I know that I sound like a bandwagon jumper, but it is much better for my health this way.

To be honest, since becoming a fan of Liverpool, I have shown more devotion to LFC than to anything else (other than God and family) in my life for a long time. But elitism from misinformed/hypocritical and just snobby LFC supporters has left a really bad taste in my mouth as well as a lot of others as well.

It is funny how you can get so much from your own fellow fans.

Further, teams and players will let us down and I am not ever going to tie my emotional happiness or sadness solely to them. Just think about the tears that were shed about Steven Gerrard in recent weeks. I still think that his staying is for HIS glory and benefit. I am just saying that I will not tie my happiness to a team if he (a Scouser/skipper/multimillionaire beneficiary for playing a game everyday for a living) doesn't. At the end of the day, he is a bloke trying to get the best wage, and the best satisfaction for himself. Any accoutrements are just extra. I don't think that many diehards understand that.

[policy]

Some may disagree with my assessment of Gerrard btw, but it is just my opinion based on the fact that he handed in a transfer request.

If he was a player/fan of CGGY's caliber, his name would be Jamie Carragher.

[Ciggy]

Some may disagree with my assessment of Gerrard btw, but it is just my opinion based on the fact that he handed in a transfer request.

If he was a player/fan of CGGY's caliber, his name would be Jamie Carragher.






(haha, I am probably going to get from AB and Woof that I ruined this thread by mentioning Gerrard when there is probably a Gerrard thread somewhere that I should have consulted first).

If he was my fella Policy Id be in jail now under suspition of manslaughter

[cptrios]

It wasn't until the 2002 World Cup that I realized how much I loved soccer (sorry about that word!), and Liverpool was the club with which I immediately identified. I started following them at the height of that massive run of bad results that year, and have been hooked ever since. I even bought the e-Season ticket, which wasn't chump change for a college student. I believe the first game I watched was us getting knocked out of the FA cup by Palace . But the end of that season, with the Worthy cup and the final, if failed push for the CL was so great...I knew this was the club for me.
Now, I do support my local team, the New England Revolution...but there's absolutely no chance that either of the two will ever play one another, aside from some freak friendly that'll likely never happen (Though the owner of the Revolution, who's an absolute football - both kinds - fanatic and genius, has made motions as to buying Liverpool). And, I'm going to be over in Troyes, France teaching English, and I'll probably go to their games and cheer them on...but I won't love them. So yeah, I think it's possible to at least enjoy other teams, especially considering that the Revolution might as well be a basketball team, they're so far away from the Reds. And yes, Liverpool takes precedence over all of the others when it comes down to it.
I did, however, manage to give a few of my friends the LFC bug when the CL games started showing up on ESPN2. Sure, you might consider them bandwagon fans...but I guarantee, even if they stop following football with any regularity, they'll be rooting for Liverpool whenever they happen to see them play

[PinkPantha]

The fans that begin to support a team for the only reason that they won a championship aren't real fans

[skipper]

The season when I started supporting Liverpool, we finished 4th, so that's not so much glory hunting, and lfc is the first football club I've felt devoted to and that wont change.

I still support lfc even if we finish 10th next season.  Fans have to stay devoted to their clubs or how else would players get motivation in bad times?

Glory hunters just dont get it.  You have to love a team and stick with them.  Even if your side are relegated, you still have to support the club and be proud of the fact that you are a fan of the club.  Knowledgeable people around the globe would applaud you for staying a true and proud southampton fan and look at you with disgust if you switched to chelsea.

Simple as that.  Glory hunting is pointless.  Besides, if you become a chelsea fan after they win the prem., you wouldnt get any glory because you didnt stick with them through the long and difficult season.

[RED ANT]

Funny topic this , reminds me of one of my best friends. He was never into football when we were growing up but with the introduction of sky and the way football became fashionable he decided he neede a team.

He went for Spurs because they were his cousins team, this didn't last long however and he has since supported Man u ,Newcastle and is now a Chelsea fan.

The worst thing is he will text me and my mates to gloat over how his beloved team is doing but when we remind him of his dubious past he soon shuts up.

He couldn't name 11 players who played for Chelsea in the 80's when asked in the pub which i found very amusing.

Haven't seen him for a while as he's spending a year traveling but i wouldn't be surprised if he's considering joining us.  

[Dalglish]

He went for Spurs because they were his cousins team, this didn't last long however and he has since supported Man u ,Newcastle and is now a Chelsea fan.

The worst thing is he will text me and my mates to gloat over how his beloved team is doing but when we remind him of his dubious past he soon shuts up.

Which of the teams that he purports to "support" does he pick then ?