Imagine you’re a sports fan – it’s not hard is it? You give your heart to your local team, their colors are your colors and on the best and worst of days your voice is hoarse.
What if one year the owners moved the team, took all the players, set the team up in a different city and state 1,500 miles away, and the team then won the championships for the next two years in a row? How would you feel about that?
That’s what happened to fans in San Jose who lost their Earthquakes to Houston in 2005. The new Earthquakes face the Houston Dynamo again this Saturday. Three years later almost all of the starting Dynamo players were Earthquakes in the past, they were near and dear to the hearts of the San Jose fans who will now cheer against them as loudly as humanly possible. Deep down the fans must be conflicted.
Still the true fan of any sport, and certainly soccer, seems to abide by a couple rules:
- Appreciate and aplaud greatness on the field of play, wherever it happens and no matter by whom
- Support the local team
For US fans of this football game we call soccer, I ask you this question:
How can you love the game and follow the world’s best, but not support your local team?
The MLS may not be the world’s very best soccer, but if it is in your city it is your soccer and you ought to be at the matches.
Some of us in Florida actually live so far from a current MLS city, the Mexican league is closer and cheaper to fly to.
So actually USL is the soccer/football we can watch locally and support. So I encourage those in non MLS cities where USL or PDL exist to support the local team. Again the standard isn’t very good, but it’s local and its our boys playing.