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The 6 soccer fans you are most likely to meet

By Dan Voicescu

AALBORG, DENMARK - AUGUST 16: Two elderly fans of AaB Aalborg watches the play during the Danish Superliga match between AaB Aalborg and Esbjerg FB at Nordjyske Arena on August 16, 2014 in Aalborg, Denmark. (Photo by Lars Ronbog/FrontZoneSport via Getty Images)
AALBORG, DENMARK - AUGUST 16: Two elderly fans of AaB Aalborg watches the play during the Danish Superliga match between AaB Aalborg and Esbjerg FB at Nordjyske Arena on August 16, 2014 in Aalborg, Denmark. (Photo by Lars Ronbog/FrontZoneSport via Getty Images) /
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With a new soccer season fast approaching, we look at the six types of fans you’re most likely to meet.

As a new season approaches, soccer fans start to gather in front of their TVs, in stadiums and bars to partake in the beautiful game, culminating with next summer’s World Cup in Russia. Soccer fans make up a diverse and complicated group. To help you navigate the soccer fandom landscape we came up with six fan archetypes. The portraits painted below are caricatures. The traits of each of the following archetypes have been intentionally exaggerated to highlight the quirks and uniqueness of each piece of the sports fandom puzzle. Clearly, some of these traits are shared across categories.

Here are the six main types of fans you’re likely to encounter as your soccer consumption increases over the course of the upcoming season.

SOCHI, RUSSIA – JUNE 21: General view of a tactics board inside a changing room prior to the FIFA Confederations Cup Russia 2017 Group A match between Mexico and New Zealand at Fisht Olympic Stadium on June 21, 2017 in Sochi, Russia. (Photo by Alex Grimm – FIFA/FIFA via Getty Images)
SOCHI, RUSSIA – JUNE 21: General view of a tactics board inside a changing room prior to the FIFA Confederations Cup Russia 2017 Group A match between Mexico and New Zealand at Fisht Olympic Stadium on June 21, 2017 in Sochi, Russia. (Photo by Alex Grimm – FIFA/FIFA via Getty Images) /

The Nerd aka The Soccer Savant

This is a relatively new fan archetype, and it owes much to the boom in data analytics, and data visualization tools. The Nerd enjoys spending time on Soccer Twitter and is more comfortable analyzing correlation coefficients tables than browsing YouTube highlights of Ronaldinho step overs and no look passes. He prefers heat maps to scorching hot takes, and lives his fandom in the abstract realm of statistics, way beyond the dichotomy of wins and losses.

Calling him a sports fan is a somewhat inaccurate description, as fandom presupposes some form of emotional attachment to the sport in general, and to a specific team in particular. Soccer enthusiast is a more apt description.

He’s more likely to celebrate a goal as the inevitable manifestation of a scientific process than the result of an athletic feat. On the other hand, he’s quick to point out that a less-than-stellar performance could just be a regression to the mean, instead of resorting to any tired sports adages such as “today just isn’t their day.”  He’s constantly looking to shift the sports discourse away from the highlight reel and bring it toward the theoretical, looking to boil down every sports conversation into a formula or algorithm.

He’s usually the one bursting the fun bubble at any game-viewing party, looking to bring down to the general excitement level to the lowest common analytical denominator. The notches on his fandom belt have been pierced by the sharp little nuggets of wisdom and anecdotes he sources from Opta and Squawka. He takes little, if any pleasure from brandishing a jersey or attending a game in person.

As far as team fandom goes, if there’s any affiliation to a particular team it will always be to the underdog. These are the teams that would vastly benefit from more science and analytics. It wouldn’t benefit his narrative as a numbers guy to get behind a team who casually throws large piles of cash around.

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