Supporting Your National Team

[Alienman]

This is more for the users who come from a nation that is not a hot bed for football, such as Canada.

I recently went to the friendly between Canada and Ecuador, in which we pulled off a draw against a much higher ranked and probably stronger squad. It was my first taste of live professional and international football. Sadly though, football, or soccer as we call it, is not the most popular sport in the country (even though more people play it than any other) and the stadium was far from full. To make the lack of supporters even worse, the majority of the fans in the stands wore Ecuadorian yellow. The red and white were confined to three sections at the one end of the stadium where we did our best to drown out all other noise in the stadium.

Now a lot of former and current Canadian players have come out and expressed how disheartening it is for them to come out into their home stadium and see more of the opponent's fans than their own. I have also heard one say that they preferred playing away from home cause than they knew they would get no support and it was more understandable.

Now to my point. I am wondering how all you other guys who come from nations where football isn't as huge as say in England support your national team and what can be done to improve these situations?

This has been a popular topic of discussion since attending the match I mentioned on my blog (Here we call it Soccer), but now I want to hear other opinions on this topic.

 

[Athe~]

This is more for the users who come from a nation that is not a hot bed for football, such as Canada.

I recently went to the friendly between Canada and Ecuador, in which we pulled off a draw against a much higher ranked and probably stronger squad. It was my first taste of live professional and international football. Sadly though, football, or soccer as we call it, is not the most popular sport in the country (even though more people play it than any other) and the stadium was far from full. To make the lack of supporters even worse, the majority of the fans in the stands wore Ecuadorian yellow. The red and white were confined to three sections at the one end of the stadium where we did our best to drown out all other noise in the stadium.

Now a lot of former and current Canadian players have come out and expressed how disheartening it is for them to come out into their home stadium and see more of the opponent's fans than their own. I have also heard one say that they preferred playing away from home cause than they knew they would get no support and it was more understandable.

Now to my point. I am wondering how all you other guys who come from nations where football isn't as huge as say in England support your national team and what can be done to improve these situations?

This has been a popular topic of discussion since attending the match I mentioned on my blog (Here we call it Soccer), but now I want to hear other opinions on this topic.

Like with any new merchandise, publicity is your best bet. But not only on TV. Your FA needs to start giving away tickets for free for like, say, a year. If people like it, they'll start buying them eventually. Not only that, but if a guy who hasn't been to a stadium enjoys it he'll take some mates next time, and his mates will take theirs, and so on.

 

[curtis290]

I'm a US soccer fan and I know how you feel. Nowadays our team is very well-supported, but this has only happened in the past 5 or so years. Every time we played CONCACAF opponents from Central America we would essentially be playing as an away team...because all of the Americans of Mexican descent would go root for Mexico. It's really ******* annoying and I feel bad for the players. Luckily this is changing now and our matches up north can sell out a stadium of 80,000 for an unimportant friendly. But I feel for you, soccer is big in Canada so I don't get why the national team isn't supported at all. It's too bad that you lose some of your good players to other nations, ie Hargreaves. I felt really bad for you guys when Teal Bunbury declared for the US. He should have declared for Canada considering his family history. And it's not like we need him.

Don't think you'll find any people on this forum though from countries where soccer/football isn't popular.

 

[Halbard]

to be honest i care 10000000000x more about my club than about my national team.
But its great to see the yanks rising in football

 

[Alienman]

to be honest i care 10000000000x more about my club than about my national team.
But its great to see the yanks rising in football

You can still support your club side at the same time as supporting your nation. If your country is in the World Cup do you just not pay attention?

 

[Halbard]

You can still support your club side at the same time as supporting your nation. If your country is in the World Cup do you just not pay attention?

let me put it this way:
If i had to choose between Portugal winning the world cup or Sporting winning the league, id go for Sporting.
I usually watch Portugal's games, but they dont cause me the emotion i get from sporting games.

 

[Alienman]

You would feel no sense of patriotism if Portugal was to win the World Cup? Would you not grab the nearest flag, run out into the streets, drink till you can barely walk and party till the break of dawn? I mean, that's what I would do.

And talking about Canada loosing players to other nations, we may be loosing Hoilett. He's the most exciting player we have had in a long time and he might wait till he gains British citizenship and declare for the English national team. That would be the worst loss for Canada, even worse than Hargreaves since he at least had British parents, and would be a giant blow to our 2014 qualification hopes. He better get his head straight and realize he would not get much playing time with England with wingers like Young, Lennon, and Walcott all before him in the squad.

 

[raul93-fan]

If you can get in contact with your FA suggest some of the following:

If a person buys a ticket he gets sth with it, like a free jersey from the national team with it, or maybe one of those scarfs that "show who are you supporting".

Or let's say, to attract families, you buy 3 tickets and get the 4th one free (with every ticket a forementioned free shirt of the national team or a scarf)

Or maybe even go to the extremes and say if they come to the match they get their first drink free or sth like that...

 

[Blynd1]

Aways support my national team, yesterday i went to Portugal vs Norway wich we one 1-0. Everytime there's a game in a stadium near the place i live , i usually go, the price of the tickets is pretty good aswell, minimum is 15 euros max is 25. The game was @Estádio da Luz (benfica stadium) 55000 sits, yesterday there was about 48000 persons in the stadium .