[ShortNCuddlyAm]

Originally Posted by dmaul1114

In sports you cheer for a team mainly, not the particularly players.

At least not in the era of free agency with players moving around and it being very rare for players to stay with one team. College sports have always been that way since players can only play four years.

Reasons for following a particular team can be varied. It can be the local team in the city or state you live (or country in the World Cup case) etc. Or it can be more random reasons.
.

Thank you Supporting the team of the area in which you live or were born I can understand more than the more seemingly random reasons.

Originally Posted by beppe

It is a passion. You develop it in time, starting since little. It pertains to the belonging factors and effects (1). One cultivates it with fetishes and icons (flags, caps, car stickers, scarfs, neck ties, pins, my wife uses also socks,...) and the nagging with adverse parties makes it stick. We are encouraging little daughter, and she shows already a strong belonging to my team, against theirs (mother, granddad and uncle). Intelligent kid.
The object in itself is irrelevant. It is the belonging that matters. Swift would have liked this so much.

in your case, for the little that I understand of you from your posts, I would say to you to just enjoy seeing it from the outside. You do not miss nothing. But you might have occasions to distinguish yourself if the day after a particularly relevant event you sport a pin, or maybe paint your face like in your avatar. discreetly. :

(1) the belonging just comes after the creature needs in Maslow's pyramid (you know the socio thing, creature, your peers, your boss, yourself as gratifiers).
It is an adolescence process and those are very sweet!

I will continue to enjoy it from the outside I think I didn't grow up with people who were particularly into any sport, so I suspect it never imprinted on me.

Originally Posted by Ankh

Milorad Jovanović still plays for Standard de Liège. He signed a deal with Liverpool and will join them on July 1st.

Wish I'd known that on the day - the way they were going on you'd've thought he'd been playing for Liverpool for ages!

I can not talk about the fans for other nations (I assume it is not much different), but Serbs have no problems with the identification. Although most of their players play in foreign teams, they:
- still have Serbian citizenship
- have been born and raised in Serbia, started their careers in local clubs
- will likely switch several clubs and countries by the end of their careers.
- will likely never play for the selection of another country.

While discussion about the clubs is open, the nation-state and citizenship can hardly be compared with the tribe and tribal mentality. At least there is a specific language and identification with the common culture.

I don't follow soccer in general, but I won't miss a single game that I can catch when it is played by any national selection. The game is different, it is not (only) about the money.

Thank you - it all helps my understanding

Originally Posted by yvanleterrible

That brings us back to the subject of why is football so divisive.
Community pressure?

If one were living in... Millwall, for example. That person would be subjected to very nasty social retaliation if it decided to root for an opposing team.

Also Glasgow, going into the wrong area in the wrong team's colours. At least, that's how it used be, no idea if it still is. I think (but I may well be wrong) that there is underlying religious reasons behind which team there you choose to support.