Do Not Sell My Personal Information
Well, it certainly is a lonely existence supporting Arsenal in New Jersey. Most people wouldn’t even understand what soccer (football) is much less an English team named Arsenal. It is just my wife and myself in our house, and since she doesn’t follow the game, she doesn’t know anything about them except that they are “My Team”. (“My Team won today” or “My Team is in first place” is what I have to say to her) The only good thing is that she understands that I follow them, and lets me do so without too much fuss.
An example may be best to describe what the game is like in New Jersey. Many of you may criticize me for explaining this, but it is the only way I can get across the apathy and stupidity of some of the people in this country regarding the game.
My example brings me to the 2003 Summer Tour of Manchester United. Since I live in the USA, and have never been, and may never go, to England, this was one of my only chances to see a top European club play a live match. I went to their match with Juventus at the Meadowlands in Northern NJ. I was excited, even if it was ManUre …
The match started, and I was sitting around some of the most obnoxious, knowledgeless idiots imaginable. These were not foreigners watching the match; they were Americans who didn’t have the first clue about what was going on in the entire match. They were just there because they heard it was a big event and thought they SHOULD go. Most of the time, they were just shouting clueless things as if they had never seen or played a soccer game in their entire lives. I had the guy next to me shouting for penalties every time someone kicked the ball out of play for a throw-in. I had the guys behind me wondering why a keeper could use his hands. I also had guys in front of me wondering what a “Cap” was and why no one was wearing them. The girl who sat next to us kept jumping on her seat every time someone from “The Red Team” (ManUre, because she didn’t even know who was playing) touched the ball and would scream at the top of her lungs when nothing at all was happening. She didn’t even know who Ruud van Nistelrooy was and thought people were booing him when they were chanting “Ruuuuuud”. Folks, this is not an exaggeration or a joke. I was dumber at the end of the match just having to listen to them. It’s amazing to me what little knowledge of “The Beautiful Game” people in this country really have.
Most people at work don’t really understand either. I used to work with someone from Liverpool (for a short period of time before he quit and moved back to England). That was really the last time I could “talk” to a live person about soccer. He was a huge ‘Pool fan and we would have a go at each other all the time. Now, I am all alone at work as well as home in that respect. One of the sales reps I work with follows the EPL, but I don’t talk to him THAT much (and he is a Newcastle fan, mainly because he hosted a foreign exchange student from Newcastle) but he at least can talk about it without sounding mind-numbingly dull. My direct co-workers don’t really understand my fascination with the game either, but they quietly deal with me listening to mid-week CL matches or EPL matches on the PC. They thought I was a little strange when I told them I taped every single World Cup 2002 games on TV. Yes, every single one. I have 26 Video Tapes with every minute of every match. They thought I was a little over the top. But that just demonstrates my love of the game. Alas, my views are not shared by many over on this side of the “Pond”. Some do, as seen on this board by a few key American members.
This is what “Supporting Arsenal in New Jersey” is like, and I think you know the reasons I come on this site to talk to people who actually have some semblance of knowledge about the game.
