Why I root for Valencia
I'll start out by saying I did not watch soccer (sorry, I'm American) until about 2 years ago. I really had no interest in it. Sure, I grew up playing it in church leagues like every other kid in the United States. I even played two years in middle school. I watched the World Cup in the summer and cheered on the USMNT but again who doesn't do that. I was a typical American sports fan - I loved my basketball and football (though I don't watch baseball). MLS was an afterthought, and probably not even that. Soccer was just something the rest of the world was good at, and almost everyone that played it was a wuss and dived and screamed anytime they got touched by another player.
Interestingly enough my interest in soccer was actually sparked by a sleepover at a friend's house one summer night two years ago. We decided to play FIFA 10 on his PS3 because that was one of his favorite games. I had never played FIFA before, but once we started I was immediately hooked. It was my type of game - nonstop action, something you could pick up and play but had to spend time on to master.
So that's where I say my love of soccer started. In a video game. Yep, that happened.
Fast forward to that fall. It was my first year of college. I bought FIFA 12, the latest installment in the FIFA franchise, and decided I needed to pick a team to root for to really get into the "beautiful game." I decided I needed to pick a European team to follow since that's where the best football in the world is played and where most of the major tournaments happen. I didn't really want to follow an English team because I had always been turned off by comments on Youtube and whatnot by Englishmen always bashing MLS and American football and how they were always boasting about the Premier League being the best league in the world while giving not an ounce of credit to football in other countries (I realize not everyone does this but still). I'm also learning Spanish so I thought following a Spanish team would help in my quest to eventually become fluent. And Spain had won the last World Cup.
So I had narrowed down my choices to a Spanish team. Now of course everyone knows about Barcelona and Real Madrid, and justifiably so as they are two of the best teams in the world. But I really had no clue about what other Spanish teams were out there so I wanted to give one of those teams a shot. Plus just about everyone in the U.S. only cheers for Real Madrid or Barcelona so I wanted to stay away from that to avoid looking like a bandwagoner. I guess I'm still considered a bandwagoner for picking a team I didn't grow up watching or a have any ties to but whatever.
After ruling out the Big Two, I looked up the history of the other clubs that were currently in the Primera Division. I didn't want to root for some scrub club that never wins anything because it would have been too hard to really get into watching their games. After researching various clubs, one stood out to me in particular - Valencia. They seemed to be Spain's "third team," the best team behind the Big Two and the team most likely to challenge them, which I figured would be acceptable to root for. And their kit colors were orange, white, and black, which is similar to my university's colors. And their crest was a freaking bat. That was probably the deal breaker.
So that's how I came to root for Los Che. I realize that's not the usual way one comes to root for a team - I wasn't born in Valencia or born into a family that rooted for the club. I definitely don't pretend to be a lifelong supporter and I understand if die-hard, lifelong supporters of the club reject me for that. But I'm here for the long-haul. Better late than never, right?
Amunt!
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