I have noticed that in European soccer games, oftentimes fans, especially those seated behind the goals, will almost unfailingly be dressed in the team’s colors. Whereas in the United States, for instance, at a Chicago Bears game, it’s possible that not even 50% of the fans in the stadium would be wearing Bears colors.
Is this a cultural thing - that there really is far more emphasis on showing up to the game being dressed in the team’s colors in Europe than in the USA?
We also don’t have freakin’ riots when our team loses.
Honestly, what the actual fuck is this? You don’t understand why people attending a game might well wear a team shirt? Have you just been rescued from someone’s basement? Interaction with other humans still a bit tricky?
Da’ Bares.
Read again. I’m asking why there is MORE such emphasis in Europe than in the USA.
You’ve not demonstrated that there is. Your OP is just speculation about things you’ve noticed about European soccer games. What league were you noticing and being all concerned about?
The seats behind the goal are often occupied by “supporters groups” or “ultras”, who wear common clothing as a badge of identification. The only equivalent I can think of from American sports (other than American soccer) are the “Cameron Crazies” and such-like student sections at college games. The students in these sections also dress uniformly in the school colors. It’s an unwritten if not a written requirement.
Maybe this is just a Chicago Bears phenomenon. In Cleveland, well more than 50% of the crowd shows up in team colors for Browns, Indians and Cavs games (bonus colors for Cavs fans who still wear the old colors from the 80s).
It’s probably not a problem in Pittsburgh either, where all 3 of their major league sports teams are the same color (black and gold).
Amazingly, despite having gone to football matches since the early eighties, I’ve never actually seen a riot.
Clearly I am going to the wrong games.
Yeah, we only have riots when our teams win…
You can’t really judge by American football games especially ones played outdoors. Fans might be wearing team colors but also have to wear winter coats. In my several decades of going to games I would say in most sports the majority of people are wearing some sort of team attire. The colors won’t be uniform because maybe it’s a tee shirt, or maybe the home jersey as opposed to the away jersey. Or maybe it’s one of hundreds of throwback or special uniforms that they sell to make more money. It’s not universal but it is prevalent.
As someone above said in European soccer the ones seen on camera are often the rabid supporters of the team and all belong to a club. In American sports those close to the camera are probably in corporate boxes and casual fans at best. Or the type of people who are concerned about how they may be seen in public.
Soccer is a winter sport in most of Europe.
Hell, Newcastle fans have a thing where for some unknown reason the males go topless in Winter:
To be honest this couldn’t be further from the truth. Yes, there may be one specific area (usually behind one of the goals) where the local hardcore fans congregate. However, watching the game (assuming here on television) the area behind the goals are the areas you see the least. The majority of the game is played in the centre third of the pitch, meaning the fans you’ll see the most are the ones on the other side of the pitch from the main cameras. Oh and most grounds are small enough that the distance between fans and the edge of the pitch is quite small.
As an example, this is my team’s ground.
It is fairly modern (it opened in 2005) which means there is a bigger distance between fans and pitch. Older grounds tended to be silly close. This was their old ground - note how close the fans on the far side are:
Southampton’s The Den (they have since moved) was famous for how close the fans were to the pitch:
Check out a Steelers game. If the person isn’t wearing a jersey they’re wearing a Steelers coat or, at the minimum, waving a Terrible Towel. Aside from the dumb fans who root for the visiting team it’s a veritable sea of black and gold.
US winters are a hell of a lot colder than average winters in Newcastle. The countries that have comparable winters tend to have Spring to Fall schedules.
That’s a thing in America too, even in the colder states. More a college thing but you see it at NFL games as well.
Velocity, have you been to any soccer or football games in the US? I don’t know about Texas, but here in the Pacific Northwest most of the fans are generally dressed in team colors.
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/l9NOu52LiwE/maxresdefault.jpg
https://jasonstravelsdotcom.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/seattle-sounders-soccer-crowd.jpg
Just do a google image search for “Sounders fans” or “Seahawks fans” and you’ll notice that a large proportion of fans are wearing team gear.
I also have to second Baron Greenback’s puzzlement at the thread question – not sure why anyone is surprised that fans dress up in team colors when attending games.
At Lambeau it’s tough to find a fan not wearing packer merchandise. As someone mentioned though there is a huge variety of merchandise colors and styling.
Underline mine. Those guys are paying through the nose for season tickets (or for a ticket linked to a season seat of someone who’s not attending); they often belong to a specific fan club.
In further news, people standing in the mosh pit more likely to wear band shirts than those in the peanut gallery.
The snarkiness of this post goes beyond what is acceptable in this forum and delves into slight "being a jerk"ness. Let’s avoid doing this in the future.
