One half of the most Football mad city in Africa. In Casablanca, you are either red or green, but you cannot mix the two. On our recent visit to Valencia, we spotted a lamppost outside La Mestalla that had been entirely taken over by Wydad Casablanca.
To European eyes, the A-League appears very americanised. Each season 14 licensed franchises from across the federation (and one in New Zealand) compete for glory in the current highest tier of Australian domestic club Football across two leagues before the top 6 compete in a series of showdown matches until the ultimate victor is decided in the “Premiership” winner-takes-all grand final in an orgy of confetti and loud pop music. For 17 years the Football Federation of Australia (now rebranded as Football Australia) has produced a very corporate and media friendly package by granting licenses to entities that can demonstrate sound financial backing, are not funded by public entities, spend below the player-salary-cap and, intriguingly, present an image that is free of any explicit reference to any nationality or ethnicity in the fabric of its branding.
This blog explores the curious nuances of Football fan behaviour around the world through the eyes of a typical fan. Our status as exiled Hull City supporters influences our branding and identity, but we seldom write about our club in favour of exploring the great stories that exist in world Football. However, there come major moments in your relationship with your club that warrant close attention, and in our case, publication.
It’s a question I get asked surprisingly often whenever I visit lower-league sides. Nevertheless, this gentleman’s abruptness caught me off-guard. I asked him to repeat himself, and he pressed on with yet more enthusiasm; “are you a Football player?”
The would-be stand-up comic in me has a stock answer reserved for this question; do I look like a professional Footballer with a belly like this? My new friend laughed and doubled down with his own quick-witted retort. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. Look at this fat bastard over here” and he patted his pal’s tummy lightly. “that’s a proper beer belly”.
A difficult club for many to like but an impossible club to ignore, 1. FC Lokomotive Leipzig is one of 2 highly-charged clubs from Leipzig in Saxony with ultras and fanatics known for their connections to far right politics. This puts them at complete odds to the far left “Diablos” ultras of BSG Chemie Leipzig in one of the most fascinating German cities in the context of Football fan culture.
By no uncertain terms, one giant of European Football has had an exceptionally poor start to the 2021-2022 season. It takes only seconds for the visitor to the Museum of Football known as Camp Nou to appreciate both the legacy as well as the monumental resources of FC Barcelona. So high is the global commercial demand for a slice of what the media brands as the Football club that embodies the Catalan spirit that “La Rambla del Barça”, a 150 walkway of sideshows, facilities and entertainment outside the actual stadium, accommodates bidding customers from the world over on any day of the week, regardless of whether or not there is a match to be played on the day of their visit.
Perennial overachievers in the Bundesliga, Borussia Mönchengladbach are an easy-to-like side for foreign enthusiasts of German Football but fans get their fare share of animosity within the country. Gladbach ultras share a friendship with Union Berlin but are otherwise pretty much hated universally from the big clubs in the league. This design was seen in Spain.
Hello darkness my old friend….. Autumn has most definitely arrived now, but that just makes finishing a match under floodlights all the more charming. We’ve been on the road again with more groundhopping with a camera with 2 matches attended in 2 days with great attendances, great atmospheres, great prices but a bit of a lack of goals in the consistently contentious comunidad of Catalonia.
From Boothferry To Germany 