Yeah. It's vomit inducing cringeworthiness.
Safe to say its a lad in a Leinster jersey sitting down to watch the match wearing man u slippers and then when the rugby is over a load of mates bail into the house in all their finest man united gear.
I nearly kicked the tv in.
Last edited by BonnieShels; 25/05/2011 at 1:07 PM.
I guarantee there isn't a single person in that ad that ever kicked a ball of any shape in their lives.
Which is fitting I suppose.
and even more fitting is that most Man U and Leinster fans never kicked a round or oval ball either
This is a most spectacular piece of barstooling, I have to say.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/...297546760.html
He can't support Man United *anymore* because they've become too commercial and corporate. But he won't go to a League of Ireland game because his friends won't approve and they're not going to win the Champions League anyway. So he'll just stick with Barcelona because they have both the community links and billions of euro he needs to truly throw his support behind a football team. Mad stuff.
Eh, that's what I mean.Originally Posted by cornflakes
Sweet Merciful Crap
Here on a technicality.
ya didn't read yours properly. Sorry bout that
Why the need to insult LOI fans? Truly pathetic garbage.Fighting that is futile. And trying to counter it with Luddite proclamations of returning to the game’s grassroots is even more futile. The League of Ireland retains a notably vocal, if suspiciously barmy, support sect. But facing away from the Premiership in favour of a pilgrimage to Dalymount is like whittling wood outside Ikea: people think you’re just odd.
what grinds my gears it that barstoolers have twisted it so that LOI fans are demanding they support one league/team over the other, as the quote above illustrates. This is just not true (except from those who truly are barmy wood-whittlers). There is nothing wrong with, for example, following an English team as "your team" but attending 10 home games of your local club a season. If every premiership footie fan in a LOI centre did that, the league would be thriving. Its not really a lot to ask either is it? Its also not really that odd...
I like high energy football. A little bit rock and roll. Many finishes instead of waiting for the perfect one.
It's not the slightest bit odd. It's perfectly natural for someone to support their national league. Irish football support in general is what the oddity is on the global scale. The oddity is in supporting a foreign multi-billion pound industry like the Premier League in a sport traditionally bound by a sense of community and identity, complaining that the commercialisation of the game is ruining it for you and consequently deciding to support Barcelona instead because they have Messi who apparently returns football to its magical roots. After all, everyone knows Messi's salary per game is a bottle of Lucozade and pack of cheese and onion Tayto... They've the highest average salary per player of all professional sports teams around the globe and are the bloody second-richest club in the world in terms of revenue, for God's sake!
What on earth was this joker doing supporting Manchester United in the first place?But what, or who, does the Manchester United of today represent in Saturday night’s final? It’s hardly the people of Sale, or Chorlton, or Stretford.
Jesus wept.But then that same shirt contains a simple motto: “Mes que un club” – More than a club.
Now that’s something worth kissing.
Jesus has cried so many times in this thread it's not funny.
I'd give him that if he wasn't then gonna ignore that rationale to support a team who are further from Ireland than Manchester.Instead there are millions around the globe whose devotion to United has no relevance to geography but is simply the end product of an arbitrary televisual preference which is at least partly facilitated by having a current team whose core contains players from Mexico, Brazil, Serbia, even north-east Ecuador.
If they are mobile then does it matter? They are mobile in another country... Whether Man United are in Manchester or in Carlisle... ;P still makes them an English team.In fact how long will it be before the ubiquitous “Man U” has about as much relevance to Manchester as the Los Angeles Rams had to LA after they moved to St Louis? Or the Baltimore Colts had after they moved to Indianapolis? That’s the thing about franchises on a major scale. They’re mobile.
But the referencing of Franchises as if it is remotely contiguous with the well held notion of British, Irish and European soccer is just plain lazy and shows absolutely no regard or knowledge of the game or sport in general. I dare you tell a Packers fan or Hab that they supprt a "Franchise".
DID YOU NOTICE A SIGN OUTSIDE MY HOUSE...?
you might have misunderstood my tone a bit Danny - i agree with everything you have said. I was just trying to point out that the practice of attending games from your domestic league which the author refers to as "a bit odd" is not odd at all and that it is pretty much the common practice in most other countries i.e. that you support your local team. Im not saying these people need to be hardcore fans who attend all home and away games. 5 home games a season would be alright. 10 Would be great and all home games would be a season ticket. People who dont attend (geographical limitations notwithstanding) are just not football fans and anything they say is just an excuse. Nothing more, nothing less.
I like high energy football. A little bit rock and roll. Many finishes instead of waiting for the perfect one.
Certainly. Wasn't disagreeing with you at all actually. I suppose I quoted you to kind of bolster or second what you were saying in response to what I also found to be a rather weird article and this notion that supporting the League of Ireland is somehow shamefully odd.you might have misunderstood my tone a bit Danny - i agree with everything you have said. I was just trying to point out that the practice of attending games from your domestic league which the author refers to as "a bit odd" is not odd at all and that it is pretty much the common practice in most other countries i.e. that you support your local team. Im not saying these people need to be hardcore fans who attend all home and away games. 5 home games a season would be alright. 10 Would be great and all home games would be a season ticket. People who dont attend (geographical limitations notwithstanding
It is pretty odd in fairness.
#NeverStopNotGivingUp
I actually felt his pain, imagine having to go all the way to Spain to find a team/club that is - owned by the fans, non money making machine, plays football,has links to its host community
.
if only we had them in this country
I'd say the st pats fan interviewed in o'connell street would write a better article for the times than that gobdaw!
Sure God love the poor pet, you'd have to feel sorry for him. Having nearly cried in 1979 when Man U lost the cup, he now realises he has no connection to them. He's clearly emotionally-repressed!!
And he was so close to the truth. I can picture him in a psychiatrist's office coming close to a breakthrough. He has reached into the depths of his soul to search for a new level of self-realisation. He has come to terms with how empty his past life has been and how he truly seeks a sense of belonging, a more honest and fulfilling path. Here it is - his moment of clarity. Doctor Melfi braces herself for this revelation, this life-altering assertion and then......"I think I'll follow Barca instead" AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGH HHHH
It reminds me of a guy I knew who had heart problems and was advised to give up cigarettes......so he took up cigars instead!
So many of his points about Man U/the Premiership are spot on and Barca do play the best football in the world, but how on earth could he look himself in the mirror and say "I used to support Man U, but now I prefer Barcelona"? Of course, the advantage of switching to Barca is that he has even less chance of ever having to attend a match which is clearly a good thing in his mind. I love the line "there is no problem identifying what or who the 2009 winners represent". Not you, that's for sure. Not some journo asking the barman in Mulligans to put on Sky Sports Xtra. But he wonders why he no longer feels a connection with an English team.
And isn't it wonderful how Barcelona are a Catalan team and are run by the fans? The Catlan fans who want to keep the spirit of the club local, who don't even associate with the rest of Spain let alone some hack in D'Olier Street. Also, did anyone seriously believe that when one of the richest clubs in the world (and one of the biggest merchandise sellers) decided to go against their tradition by allowing (even paying for) UNICEF as a shirt sponsor that it was a completely altruistic move and not a gateway to a massive future revenue stream??
Don't get me wrong. I love watching Barcelona play. It's a thing of beauty. But if I became a Barca fan, would I have to deny myself any pleasure from watching Ozil or DiMaria for Real Madrid? Some of the best football I've seen was from Zidane and the traitorous Figo (who any true Barca fan would despise). And I wouldn't have been able to enjoy watching Sgorio when I was a kid to see Butragueno and Hugo Sanchez in Welsh! Far from being Luddite, League of Ireland fans tend to really appreciate football in all its breadth. Growing up, I was fascinated with the technique of Lobanovsky's Kiev. Then there was the sheer awesomeness of Milan 88-94, the teenage kicks of Ajax '95 and the joy of Arsenal's Invincibles. All the while, nothing could beat the thrill of live football (live being 'in the flesh' rather than 'live and exclusive').
That hack would probably love the right-on story of AFC Wimbledon - the ultimate no to franchise football. He uses the example of the Baltimore Colts. I have plenty of friends from around Baltimore. The reason they stopped following the Colts after the move to Indianapolis wasn't because of some disgust about greed-driven shipping out of a franchise, it was because they were no longer their LOCAL team. Baltimore went out and did to Cleveland exactly what Indianapolis had done to them: they stole their team. And now everyone in Baltimore supports the Ravens (formerly the Cleveland Browns) because they can attend games, interact with the team and because the team REPRESENTS them.
As my grandfather would've said "that fella needs some fresh air". It's been said here a million times, but nothing beats going to a game. He, and Mr A, are right. Being a League of Ireland fan is a bit mad. But so are most of the exciting, romantic, inventive things in life. When you love your club, yes, there is a small element of mass-like religious obligation about going when things are bad, but a life with the League of Ireland is genuinely thrilling, emotive and fulfilling. The interaction with the club, the social element, the moments of magic, the despairing lows and the unbridled highs. I never believe we should try to guilt people into going to football matches - it's their loss, they're the ones missing out on something special.
Thanks, Brian O'Connor. You have unintentionally reminded me why I love MY club and MY league. The League of Ireland: Football in Highest Definition!
just out of interest, why do you think it is odd? The concept of supporting your local team isnt odd to 90% of the football world. Except for those who are truly odd - you know who you are - we are only odd in the eyes of the barstoolers. To your average fan from countries all over the world, it is the barstooling lot that are the odd ones.
I like high energy football. A little bit rock and roll. Many finishes instead of waiting for the perfect one.
Like in India or Thailand? We are the archetypal barstool nation - the one from which every emerging football nation has studiously learned its Premier League obsession and absorbed all the lessons. We are, essentially, ahead of our time.
LOI fans are odd in the sense we are people in a country whose people would like to considered themselves football-mad who actually appreciate the game at all levels and not just use it as a status symbol. That's odd. I am so starved of football I might end up at Dalymount tonight.
Carlsberg don't do forum posts, but...
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