The end of a season, and the end of this project
How fitting, that the Premiere League and La Liga both end the same week as my ethnography which researched them both.
This study is of particular interest to me as I am both an avid traveler and a soccer enthusiast. When I started this project, I had every intention of solely researching and exploring FC Barcelona fans in the United States and how they found the team and how they maintained a connection to the team. When I started interviewing my subjects, I found that while they all watched soccer, many did not enjoy or follow the teams in the United States (Major League Soccer teams or the USNTs) unless they were watching it with a group as more of a social situation, not actually for the enjoyment of the game. This sparked my interest to compare soccer fans preference to US teams vs international teams instead of just US soccer fan’s fidelity with FC Barcelona. When I changed my topic, my key words facts & fidelity fit more comfortably and it made more sense to consider the impact of media and international relations on US soccer fans as a whole rather than just the fans who chose to support a single Spanish team- FC Barcelona. Changing my subject and question also gave me a wider audience to observe and interview and helped renew my interest in my subject. Discovering why people around me developed their fidelity for soccer made me appreciate my team, FC Barcelona, even more and renewed my infatuation with my team and made me grateful for the opportunities Americans are presented with; the whole world is essentially in their hands.
As my project developed into the ethnography it is now, I gathered an impressive amount of support about not only soccer fans in the United States and their preference of teams, but on how they are influenced to choose those teams. In conclusion, my research with US citizens who watch international soccer tells us a bigger story about how nationalism, globalization, and media play a role in something as trivial as watching a sport. Without these outside influences, we as a country would not even have our own soccer league, let alone have the option to watch other nations play. Americans love sports, celebrations, and winning- all of which are stereotypes that are associated with our culture and something I heard a lot in my time spent abroad. Americans will show their fidelity and fight feverishly for their team, throwing facts and sometimes even fists to defend their own. So it is only natural that Americans want to watch teams who win, and that Americans will gather in crowds to cheer on their home country when they are on the world’s stage.
Fortunately, my British pride and joy Swansea City FC managed to stick around the Premiere League for another year, barely crawling out of a relegation spot in the last few weeks. Unfortunately, FC Barcelona fell short to Real Madrid, by a mere three points, and were unable to claim the La Liga title this year. But don’t worry, we’ll get ’em next year
