Foreign fans vs local fans: Can they co-exist?

Something that is regularly debated on social platforms is whether you are a proper fan if you are not from the region of your favourite football club or any other sports team of your choice. While it is a genuine question, it is a highly debatable one.

English football has been famed for its passion, the togetherness, the loud singing on its terraces, among other things; but many Englishmen feel that their football clubs have been invaded by foreigners. The foreign owners only care for their money and have left the fans in the cold; many feel they simply don’t care for the clubs and are here for only their monetary gains; other than this, a very debatable question is usually asked – has the influx of foreign players lowered the quality of English players coming through? While these questions are to be kept for another day, the immediate concern for many is ‘Am I a proper fan if I support Chelsea and I don’t live anywhere near London?’ or ‘Can I be singing YNWA every week if I don’t belong to Liverpool?’

The answer to this question is open for argument. While the natives are right in saying that it is their team since many of them have been supporting the club for generations and spend somewhere around 40 pounds per game to watch their team, it is absurd to brand those fans who, despite living at the other end of the world, invest almost equal time and energy, stay up all night to watch their beloved team and save up for years to make their one holy pilgrimage to the stadium of their favourite team to be labelled as plastics.

Let’s face it; most of us started supporting the team after some kind of major success. Manchester United have been one of the most successful clubs in the world for 20 years; many started supporting Chelsea only after Roman Abramovich took over; most of the international Liverpool fans started supporting the Reds after that famous Champions League Final and many support Barcelona currently just because they are the best team now and have the world’s best player in their ranks. I admit that there are quite a few plastic fans or glory hunters all over the world, but what about people who were not even in their mother’s womb when Liverpool last won the league; what about those who did not watch the 2005 Champions League final and started supporting Liverpool because they just purely loved the team? What about those who wear the crest of Manchester United with as much pride as any other Mancunian? They do deserve to be applauded for their commitment and never-ending passion for their team.

Many local fans claim their teams to be a big team but can they truly be called big teams without the international fan base who generate huge amount of revenues through their merchandise sales and memberships? Manchester United have a fan base of about 330 million after they won 19 English titles (12 of them in the last 20 years). Linfield have won 50 League titles in their Northern Irish League but do they enjoy the same popularity? No. Why? Because they simply don’t have the same popularity world wide. Yes, it is a small nation with a small league and comparatively lesser competition, but this just proves that league titles alone do not validate your popularity.

As we all know, ever since the advent of the Premier league, money has always been an important issue and trophies and the local fan base would not have sufficed. While most of the foreign fans acknowledge the dedication of the locals, it is time the locals reciprocated it.

Without the locals, the game will lose its authenticity and without the international fanbase, they wont survive as the big clubs they are now known as. The best example is that of Man City and Arsenal – one has won 2 trophies in consecutive years and the other hasn’t won a single trophy in 8 years. But they can still challenge City’s billions because of their popularity and the resultant revenues they gather.

In my opinion, both sets of fans can co-exist in a healthy way and it is just a question of finding the middle ground.