The 6 soccer fans you are most likely to meet

The Jock

Although the glory days of his high school soccer career may be far behind him, the Jock continues to carry himself as an athlete and a player, with the swagger of someone who knows something you don’t. He prefers to consume soccer as part of a group, ideally accompanied by a sidekick whose sole purpose is to serve as witness to The Soccer Jock’s former glory, allowing him to reference that one time he found the back of the net late in the final of the divisional quarterfinals against bitter foes from across the tracks. The story becomes more improbable each time you hear it. Continue to  watch games together with this guy and by next year’s World Cup in Russia it will turn out he scored a last-minute bicycle kick to give the U.S. U16s a ticket to the World Cup.

Attending or watching a game in his presence is usually exhausting. He’s very quick to deflect attention away from the screen or the field in front of the audience and direct that attention to himself. He pounces on every imperfection of play and will often engage in demonstrating how a pass or a shot should have been taken (Example: you gotta hit that with your laces bro, gotta send that far post man). Likes to engage in the art of hate-watching, extremely trigger-happy to fire off criticism whenever a shot or a pass is misfired, or to second-guess every coaching move, formation or tactical approach.

To maximize your entertainment factor as casual observer, your best hope is to be in the presence of two such fans. Worlds will collide. Few things are more entertaining than a Zoolander-type dance-off among two former players eager to dribble around each other based on their credentials as former youth players.

There’s a special offshoot of this soccer fan category worth mentioning. This would be the European or South American variety, who claims to have played in the youth systems for the likes of Real Madrid, Milan, River Plate, etc. After a decade-plus of watching soccer in bars among soccer fans from all walks of life, I could swear the big clubs in Europe and South America have tens of thousands of kids on the verge of becoming the next international superstar.

Every soccer bar has a number of foreign transplants, some of whom will be claiming they should be playing in the game instead of watching it, were it not for a bad blister on their big toe the day of the U14 trials for Atletico Madrid. This type of fan is the supercharged version of the Jock as he considers himself part of a world-class, superior soccer culture, one that unlike the American soccer culture has produced world class players and teams. Generally, the ex-player/jock makes for good viewing company, especially if you don’t take them seriously.