Christopher Hamilton

My friend Keith and I were recently talking about adopting an English 2nd Division side to support and add a little extra random excitement to our weekend football watching sessions. So once we know who exactly is going to be in the division next season we get to randomly pick a team from a hat, learn as much about them as we can and have another friendly rivalry as we do with the teams we genuinely support, I’m a Hibs man, and he supports Hearts.

It got me thinking, a strange endeavour for me I know, but I’m considering picking an MLS team to follow too. I have an NFL team, an NHL team, hell there’s even an MLB team that I support, I know pretty much nothing about baseball or hockey, but I support the teams all the same.

I love American sports and with the arrival of Beckham in LA it’s bound to add to their publicity and the coverage the MLS gets over here in the UK.

The question is who to support. It’s a tough question because when you pick your team you have to stick with them through the highs and lows.

I used to be a fan of players, and I would watch the teams they played for, without ever really supporting them. For example, before I had an NFL team, I was a big fan of Derrick Thomas, but not really a fan of the Chiefs, although it became a close thing. Then when he died, I really didn’t want to watch the Chiefs at all anymore. So I decided to choose a team over any players. That’s when I chose the Falcons who conveniently drafted a player that would become one of my favourite players in the league, Mike Vick.

It would be easy for me to pick a well known player, such as Freddy Adu, or Beckham and then support that team. I don’t really want to do it that way though. It ties your allegiance to players and not the club, which is the wrong way to go about things.

So who do I go with?… decisions decisions