Proper title: How to watch (and enjoy) the English Premier League in the US Hello. Not enough people watch european soccer on this forum and others, this is clear due to the lack of megathreads. I want to encourage the development of future soccer discussers and so I'm going to do my part to get people started. I am a totally born-again soccer fan, so my knowledge is skin-deep in a lot of areas and I'm passing on the great information I got a the beginning of this season from a lot of people who are likely here at this board. What's good about soccer: * 1-2 games per week at most: It's not a huge time commitment. * Actual tactics which can potentially overcome skill. * No commercials or game-stops except at half-time. * Constant drama, fed by deceitful tabloids. This is a good thing for getting committed. * Coming from an ice hockey background I thought of soccer as too slow but it's really not true, except when it is. How quickly a game goes is really dictated by the style of play a particular team has. The team Chelsea for example has a well deserved reputation for boring play, but most of the top teams play quite "attacking football" which makes for great entertainment. * No overtime: games can actually draw, so only in very rare playoff situations does a game go over 90 odd minutes. What's bad about soccer: * Time zone, as North Americans you have to be ready to get up early in the morning to watch games live. But lets face it we're all getting older and soon enough those 7pm hockey games are going to be pushing your bedtime limits. * Constant drama, if you don't like that kind of thing. So, step one, pick a team. If you're primarily an english speaker, the English Premier League is the most sensible choice since all the commentary and coverage will be in english. Here is the table as it stands now, halfway through the season. Keep in mind that the bottom 3 teams at the end of the season will be "relegated" and drop to the lower leagues, and coverage of them will drop to miniscule levels. The top 3 teams of the lower league will be promoted for the next season. Therefore, it's a good idea to pick a team which won't be likely to drop. By far the most sensible choice of team will be one of the current top 6: Man City, Man United, Tottenham, Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool. These teams are all well funded, have maximum coverage, and significant international fan bases. Manchester United: Ridiculously successful, everyone hates them for it other than their gigantic fan base Chelsea: Old money, everyone hates them for "buying the title" for a few years Manchester City: New money, people don't seem to hate them too much yet though, other than Man United fans Arsenal: Very popular for having good performance on relatively less money Tottenham: Always been "pretty good but never great" until this year, when they're going gangbusters Liverpool: Another team that's generally always been in the top 6, but never won the title Step two, understand the competitions. Champion's League: This competition is Europe wide, all the best clubs from their individual leagues play for king of the hill. The biggest money comes from this competition, if you're given a choice of a competition to win, this should be it. There is a sub-league, the Europa league where less successful teams compete in a similar fashion. It's an interesting year for the Europa league this year because Manchester City and Manchester United are both in it. Premier League: This is the main competition for the top English teams, 3 points for every win, 1 point for every draw, 0 points for a loss. The goal each team in the premier league is 1. Win the league (top Points, best Goal Difference in the case of a tie) 2. Get in the top 4 teams, so that you can qualify for the Champion's League next season. 3. Don't get relegated, pour l'amour de dieu The FA (football association) cup: This is considered a top trophy for some reason, I don't know much about the qualification yet but it's an English competition with considerable prestige still. League cup (currently called the Carling cup): An English competition where some of the lower teams in the leagues are qualified to compete. The top teams generally use this competition to play their younger up and coming players. Step three, watch the games. If you want to watch the games live, you're going to be getting up very early in the morning. If you're in a big city you can probably find a pub near you where they play the games. Otherwise you'll be wanting to watch either using broadcast TV or via internet. If you're using broadcast TV, you will likely want to subscribe to the Fox Soccer Channel (and potentially Fox Soccer Plus). You may only be able to find these on satellite in your area. Personally I watch all my games on the internet, here is the schedule I use to find games: http://www.epltalk.com/premier-league-tv-schedule If you're willing to get up early you can find free high quality streams of games from sites like freefootball.eu. If you want to watch on demand, looking at the above list in order to watch all games on-demand, you'll definitely want to subscribe to foxsoccer.tv ($20 per month). Unfortunately this still leaves you in the cold for games on ESPN (usually 1 of the big games per week). If you happen to subscribe to an internet provider which has a deal with ESPN (Comcast does), you can watch them online at ESPN3 (http://espn.go.com/watchespn/index/_/source/espn3/). If you don't, you'll need to be an early riser for that game. Step four, get obsessed. footballfilter.com -- Most of the sites they list are fairly useless due to a lack of updates, but the top four "broadsheets" and likely the four tabloids will be of interest. Terrific blog on the financials of the clubs, picking one on Tottenham for example swissramble.blogspot.com/2011/12/tottenham-grounds-for-optimism-or.html Find team specific blogs. If you follow Chelsea I can recommend this one: chelseafcblog.com Podcasts: Football Weekly: This is a great podcast, though you may find your head spinning in the 2nd half where they go over European teams you'll have never heard of. ESPN Soccernet Podcast: This is a less great podcast, but they spend more time on the actual Premier League than Football Weekly does.
Thanks for this, good stuff. You might want to consider posting it in the existing soccer thread though, but your call.
I thought about it but wanted this "guide" not to be lost in the thread, also the subsequent hooligan-gentleman threads are disguising soccer, when soccer badly needs to be found. I'm happy and encourage discussing the daily football business in that one though.
All good! An especially special thanks for the internet viewing link, though I'll have to look at a proxy or somesuch to make it work from here.
After the last world cup I looked at the EPL to pick a team to root for. I settled on Tottenham because it sounds good, has ham in the name and the logo is a cock. That said I never got into following it. So it goes.
Were you watching the games? This is a terrific time to be following Tottenham, they're doing well, potentially going to win the title this year, and their style of play is really fun to watch. If you want to give it another try, go to foxsoccer.tv and pony up $20 for a month and watch their last game with Everton on demand. Luka Modric, Gareth Bale, totally worth watching.
I was just catching them as they were re-broadcast one MSG channel or whatever. It was a bit ad-hoc since they would show various EPL games. I just couldn't get into it. That said, go Hotspurs!
The FA cup is a knockout competition where all professional teams registered with the English FA are eligible to play. For this reason it's pretty exciting as you get absolute minnows can be drawn against world class teams - and sometimes the result goes the wrong way. Although it's a high-profile competition, major sides often field their B-team as they try to avoid injuries for the more lucrative European cups.
Having team allegiance is always the biggest impediment for me with the EPL. Even though my local Revs suck, I'm still going to be far more interested in what they do. I've tried picking a team to follow, like Fulham, and it can turn out to be a properly tumultuous ride but I can't get invested in the team's future. BBC's Match of the Day is in my opinion the best review show out there. It shows almost every important moment of a match rather than just the goals. It's the best way to follow the EPL without devoted huge amounts of time to it.
This thread contains far too few references to Sporting Kansas City and their intense rivalry with the LA Galaxy!
Can the title be changed to "How to watch and enjoy the EPL in the US"? There are other leagues around, including one in the US that doesn't involve needing to be home in the morning.
Definitely people should watch Match of the Day if they can find it, I don't really know of a legitimate way of watching it from the US unfortunately. Even with illegitimate ways I miss a few that I don't want to. You can find torrents and potentially proxy your way over to the UK for BBC's Iplayer, but both are unreliable. For me getting invested in the ongoing stories was the best way to stay interested in the team. Will the upcoming game be the one where Fernando Torres finally scores a few goals? Will John Terry be arrested for racism? And every week there are referee decisions to get pseudo-outraged about. That's the key role of checking out the tabloids. Unfortunately a team like Fulham just doesn't get the coverage (tabloid or broadsheet) that the top teams do. Zonal Marking (primo blog) for instance almost never writes articles on the tactics of Fulham unless they happen to be playing one of the top 6.
That's a good point, I'm not finding a way to change the title unfortunately. European soccer has the biggest monetary investment in it so the best players tend to play there which makes the game more enjoyable for me, prejudice clearly blinded me.
Pretty sure those 18 trophies in the cabinet up at Anfield say League Champions or similar. Yeah yeah, the Mancs have overtaken us, give us something to aim for again ;)
One thing to keep in mind, if you're an American and picking a team from England or wherever, is to get an idea of the history of whatever club you support. The above quote illustrates this; most teams are going to have a long history. Take some time to learn it, and you'll probably appreciate the experience a lot more.
I'm partial to Everton only because Tim Howard is their keeper and right now they have Landon Donovan on loan.
Ha fair point, I was referring to the "Premier League" which has only been around since 1992 or so but clearly there's a big history before that. I'm happy to be schooled on league legends of old, especially why some teams seem to have grudges against others.
It's usually just geography. Brandon makes a good point though. Sky didn't invent footy in 1992, and forgetting that can wind people up. Football is about much more than the idiot tabloid frothing, booming TV graphics and tattooed thugs, so it's wrong to concentrate on them. That's all superficial, but you'll engage with teams much more if you embrace their history a bit. You can't be a Manchester United fan without knowing about the Busby Babes, or Georgie Best, or why Denis Law didn't celebrate that goal, or the "Fergie out" banner. You can't support Liverpool without knowing about Bill Shankly, the Kop, or Hillsborough, or Heysel, or that title decider with Arsenal in 1989. You can't support Tottenham without knowing they're a bunch of-Sorry, I'm a West Ham fan. Anyway, you can be a supporter without all that stuff, but it'll probably feel a little hollow. You're more of an interested spectator. Supporting is more participative. Or at least, it should feel that way. Once you commit to actually researching a team you're more likely to stick with them. To that end I would also strongly recommend finding a team you have even the tiniest actual link to and supporting them through thick and thin, rather than joining an endless stream of yawnworthy glory boys* supporting the Top 6. It's about the lows, as well as the highs. Going out of the Champions' League in the semis does not count as a low. There's something kind of heartwarming about someone in Massachussets quixotically supporting Swansea, or whatever. Also, Chelsea are about new money as it gets. Abramovic only took them over in 2003. Man City just happen to be even newer money. *classic Man U joke, usually following unexpected defeat to someone like Fulham - "At least their fans didn't have far to get home." Y'know, because they all live in the home counties, rather than Manchester. Snarf.
Remembrancer, you got it all wrong. Step 1: Buy Football Manager. Step 2: Become a fan of FM. Step 3: Apply what you learned in FM when you watch a real game to make it somewhat interesting. I like English Premier soccer when it's (rarely) on, but it's also a sport that requires a big, HD screen to make it somewhat watchable.
Right, but I'm trying to get people engaged in watching the game and I don't think the way to do that is to front-load a lot of required history and say "you're not a real fan if you weren't there when we was shit". Especially over here where getting engaged is a lot more difficult, I personally don't know a single other person who watches the EPL week-in week-out. Once you're invested in a team you'll naturally want to learn more about the history. And I can't agree that going out of the Champion's League doesn't count as a low, it's all about expectations, if you exceed them it's exciting, if you go below them it's sad. If I had been been a Blackpool supporter last year I would be completely out of luck this year: no way to watch their games, no coverage on Match of the Day, just some scores and maybe a blog. It's a romantic idea but it's not practical in this situation. That said I also follow Sunderland, and they're my #2 team. If they come up against Chelsea I pull for Chelsea because I WANT to watch and cheer in Champion's League games, the idea of coming up against Barca or Real is amazing, but other than that I'm pulling for them. But there's really no tiny link to find which I might have to any of these teams, I just want to watch great football and care about it.
Actually it all started with me buying FM 2011 on a steam sale and realizing, "I have no idea what's going on", so I decided to learn football. I've tried it again recently and now it's more like "I have no idea how to do well". I watch the games on my 24" monitor, granted it's about a foot from my face but I've got no problems following it.
My tongue was kind of in my cheek a bit there. I wouldn't really actually expect anyone to go and study that stuff. It sinks in by osmosis, and you have to start off somewhere, either by having a team handed on to you as a kid or picking one arbitrarily later on. I'm definitely not having a go at you for being interested or not knowing who played centre-half for Chelsea in 1927. I was just trying to gently skewer the fact that a lot of your OP seemed focused on the superficiality and bombast of the modern game. Infographics and oil money and the idiotic machinations of Sepp Blatter are insufferable if you don't engage with the core romance of the sport. That's something that might be even more important to remember if you're following from a distance. Which leads me back to that last thing - going out of the Champions' League in the Semis is definitely not a low.
I can appreciate both the highbrow and the lowbrow aspects, I'm not sure I appreciate the romance at this point but I definitely appreciate the nerdy strategy game aspects: What formation, what soldier is best where, auction house, etc. I did purchase Chelsea FC: The Official Biography, but whether I get through it is still in question.
Is there a good place to get League 2 information/updates? ESPN is kind of lacking in that regard, and there's a couple smaller teams I'd like to follow, like the recently promoted AFC Wimbledon.
The team's actual website is usually a good repository of articles, links and news. Most teams usually have multiple amateur fan outlets covering them in some detail. Often these are collected in the links section of their wikipedia page. More generally, try the BBC, the Guardian and The Football League's (as opposed to the Premier League's) website. Don't expect the same firehose of coverage you get on the Premiership or NFL.
Thanks! I will do some bookmarking. I started playing FIFA 12, and I pretty much only play League 2, so it would be nice to get more information on it. Also, I dig underdogs so AFC Wimbledon is interesting to me.
No worries! Although you're a stronger man than I if you enjoy piloting the drunken stumbles of lower division donkeys on FIFA 12. If the real League 2 players were as bad as the way they're represented there (and in most footy games, to be fair) nobody would ever score. Or even find the pitch, for that matter. There's the prospect of a competitive AFC Wimbledon / MK Dons match in the not-too-distant future. Now that would be interesting. The whole episode was a completely bizzare and slightly shameful affair.
Yeah, I was reading about that. I bet there would be some fairly bad blood there. In happy FIFA 12 news, I was able to beat Inter 1-0 with AFC Wimbledon with a header by Midson and several shots off the frame by Inter. Oh, they will be a Premier League team, oh yes.
