Madri is a catch all term for a pre-match cooking juice of choice. Obviously the closer you live the ground the bigger fan you are, not sure why you are questioning that logic.
Says who? Why should playing Zrinjski Mostar in a second rate competition twice, maybe three or four times, a season be more important than playing Derby, in a local derby, and maybe getting them in the cup? Is it the inherent attractiveness of the rivalry developed by having to take a two day round trip, an overnight hotel stay, and a kill the planet set of unnecessary air miles that particularly appeal to you?
It's 'bigger' because you have been told it's bigger...because it's ever more football for broadcasters to sell you, at ever higher prices, to an ever wider audience. It's hugely diluted with a bunch of no marks for the purposes of never mind the quality, feel the width.....and the money that it generates kills the competition within your local league, in the pyramid, and in 'real' ('best') fans pockets. I can see the value of winning teams (league, FA cup winners, maybe a couple of runners up in a second tier competition) duking off for national league kudos. Can I support the value in Servette, Molde, and Maccabi Haifa generating more income than the likes of birmingham city on the back of mass english team involvement in relentless pointless european games? No I cannot.
If you didn't reduce your 'best in the world' competitive pyramid to a third rate system, you would see more quality players throughout it. Rather than concentrated in limited clubs, and with foreign clubs. I would rather visit clubs with a connection to my historical football experience...than watch a load of meaningless/pointless games on telly. And deadleg the players to compromise their peak powers for traditional pyramid games while they do it. YMMV.
Good for them. Most people don't, and can't, go. Because the games are prohibitively expensive and comparatively much less accessible.
When a club is run with the interests of the local community at heart. to make games accessible, to provide a pathway for new fans to become involved, to provide participants with a connection to the local community both to represent and inspire them. When does it stop ? A long time ago as a result of mission creep largely rooted in turning sporting institutions into businesses.
I'm not saying that draconian rules need to be imposed to turn back time. I'm saying that the horse has bolted, I don't like what it's become, and I reserve the right to be about as interested in them, as they are in me. Which is not very much.
I also think it's pretty obscene, in the modern world that we live in with the challenges that it presents to us as a species, to construct a global behemoth with an exponential increase in carbon footprint, at the cost of more localised competition.
0 x 0 x 0 / 3000 = 0. I do think that Ingo's formula is missing a factor though, given it's designed to reward blind adherence to values that have nothing to do with football you should probably add something like "rating out of 10 for Ryan Yates's importance/value to the squad". After all, a real fan places the ability and willingness to get into them and fuck them up far above any kind of namby-pamby johnny come lately Europoof style of kicking the ball to a teammate, or worse, at the opponent's goal.
How does that fit with tricky’s narrative that we are all being force fed irrelevant European football at the expense of cheering on plucky little Leicester and Leeds?
You’re, approx 0/10. I am 0/10,000. We are equally worst but, at the same time, I am much worse.
I used to measure my distance to the CG in metres.. as in.. my front door was about 20 metres from the Bridgeford End car park. I’m clearly bad at this proper fan lark.
I expect it's probably a reflection of the fact that more people have got Sky than TNT. Just like the women's football (on itv) the other day outrating all of the men's football.
As competitions get spread across more and more platforms, people have to pick and choose. I’d watch Champions League.. but over here it’s on a platform that I don’t have and that doesn’t have any other sport I’m interested in. So I don’t bother.
Football here is spread over four streamers. One has the PL (and Spanish football, I think), one has the football league, one has the Australian League, one has Champions League. If you count MLS on Apple then that’s a fifth. I assume Bundesliga and one or two other big European leagues are scattered about too, also internationals, but it’s all thinly spread and only one of the platforms has a wider sports portfolio worth paying for.. and that one is now price-gouging and, for me, is mainly just an expensive place to watch the racing cars. The potential of streaming has been well and truly snuffed out.
0 x 0 x 0 / 118 = 0 And I'm only 118 miles from the City Ground, so I'm a thoroughly useless plastic bastard. Then again, change 'living close to the ground' to 'born close to the ground' and I'm back in the competition. (Bathley Street).