I started playing the game when I was 8 years old (1978) and played in Manchester, NH's first "little league" soccer league.
Back in the day, we were able to watch games on TV-PBS via the "Soccer Made in Germany" game of the week, all though I never really seemed to get into it.
I took a sports writing class my freshman year in high school (1984), and I would have the Sunday Boston Globe delivered to my house. The Sunday Globe sports section was huge and had some of the best columnists and beat writers in the country, and they had a weekly half page column on soccer, mostly world soccer, as soccer in the US was non-existent at the time.
I would read the column and start to recognize some of the names that would appear on a weekly basis, names like Diego Maradona, Michel Platini (who led Euro '84 with 9 goals, the 2nd highest scorer had 3 goals) and 3 of the greatest soccer players to play the game-George Best, Franz Beckenbauer and Johan Cruyff, who were at the end of their careers and were receiving a lot of print in the soccer column.
The soccer page also listed the tables (standings) for some of Europe's top domestic leagues, so I would look at them, not having a clue as to who/what I was following, so in 1984, I started following Manchester United in England's First Division, basically because I was born and raised in Manchester, NH. MUFC finished 4th that year, but won the FA Cup, so United was given some extra print because of the FA Cup win.
That is how I became a fan of Manchester United and if Manchester City were in the First Division, and not the Second Division, there's a very good chance that I would have followed City, and I would not be a huge fan of soccer that I am today, because United really started to take off in terms of being a world elite team at about that time, to coincide with the arrival of Alex Ferguson. If I had followed Manchester City, I might not have followed the game as much, because United started winning the English First Division and were playing in tournaments like the European Cup Winners Cup, and Champions League (or the whatever these Cups were named at the time), if I followed City, I would not have followed the Cups that United were in and City was not. At that time and because of the various Cups, I was able to follow other Euro domestic leagues because of teams like AC Milan, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, Ajax, Porto and Juventus.
I was already a United fan, and had grown to understand the various domestic and Euro Cups by 1990 or so, but the 1986 World Cup was huge for me, as I was able to visualize world soccer on TV, as Diego Maradona grabbed the world's attention, and when the World Cup came to the states in 1994, I was able to catch the three games here in Foxborough, MA, and I was at the last game that Maradona played for the Albicelestes, before he was banned from the World Cup and international play for another failed drug test.The Gabriel Batistuta hat trick against Greece and the Claudio Caniggia brace against Nigeria, along with Maradona's last national goal against Greece (and appearance, I believe), perhaps made those trio of players my favorite all-time trio of players to be on the same pitch, on the same team, at the same time.
I have followed Argentina since roughly 1986, and I am always telling people that I do not follow La Seleccion because of Lionel Messi, I follow Argentina because of Claudio Caniggia, Gabriel Batistuta and of course, Diego Maradona (Diego Simeone also played on that 1994 Argentine team).
Now that I believe that I am a fan of world soccer (it's 1999), and I am not sure when, but ESPN/ESPN2 started televising the Champions League, and the internet was starting to prove as a useful resource to follow teams and leagues. Again, it's 1999, and I am able to follow the EPL on the internet, but I can't watch any games live (I watched a ton of MUFC games/highlight reels on the internet that weren't live, and I was only able to get the scores after the match was done, so I would watch what I could before I looked up the final score). MUFC went their last 20 games without a loss in that 1998-99 season and edged Arsenal by one point to win England (can you imagine today that a team does not lose a game in their final 20 games, and still have to scrape and crawl their way out of 2nd place and hope for results against Arsenal?).
It's April 1999 or so, and I am starting to read more and more about this Treble. I have researched this Treble and understand it, but I do not have a clue what the significance of the Treble is. Six days after winning England (on Judgement Day), Man United beats the Bar Codes to win the FA Cup, the world's oldest and possibly the world's most historical domestic league cup. Step two of this Treble has been completed and the internet is really starting to buzz!
Four days after winning the FA Cup, and 10 days after winning England, Alex Ferguson's name is gone, deleted, retired, dead...... and Sir Alex Ferguson is born. The Champions League final is set and Bayern scores first, and holds that lead and controls most of the remaining minutes of the game, including hitting the wood 2 or 3 times and were unlucky because of a couple of great saves by Peter Schmeichel. There are roughly 3-4 minutes left to play in regulation time when Champions League officials start to carry the Cup down from the executive's box to the pitch, and the Cup is decorated with Bayern Munich colors and flavors!
*Can Manchester United score? They always score* pleads Martin Tyler from inside my television set. The rest is Treble [/I]history. Stoppage/injury/extra time goals by Teddy Sheringham and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer deliver the Champions League trophy to Manchester United. Those 3 minutes and two stoppage/injury/extra time goals were the most jubilant moments I have ever had in my lifetime, and you can add up all of my other most jubilant moments together (in terms of watching sports) and it still does not come close to those final three minutes I watched that Wednesday afternoon from Barcelona.
I didn't understand the significance of the Treble [/I]at the time, but I sure as hell understand it now, and if United didn't play subs and kids, who knows, maybe they could have picked up a fourth trophy with the League Cup (they lost in the quarterfinals that year). Even though the Treble [/I]has been won in recent years by Bayern Munich, Inter Milan and Barcelona in their domestic leagues, the acknowledgement of winning the only Treble [/I]in English history is huge and it is the measuring stick for all English teams (Liverpool won the Cup Treble in 2001 when they won the League Cup, FA Cup and the Champions League, but they missed out on one of the big prizes, the Premier League, where they finished 3rd third, 1 point behind 2nd place Arsenal and 11 points behind league winners, MUFC).
Sorry if this was long, but this is just a fraction of how I became a soccer fan, and today, not only do I have to explain that I am a fan of Argentina fan because of Claudio Caniggia, Diego Maradona and Gabriel Batistuta and not because of Lionel Messi, I also have to explain why I am a fan of Manchester United, because many people think I jumped on bandwagon of the title runs in the 1990's, or I jumped on the Cristiano Ronaldo bandwagon, or the Rooney bandwagon. Nope, I jumped on the Sunday Boston Globe sports section of 1984 bandwagon!
The internet and number of games, leagues, teams, cups.....that are on TV has only heightened by love for the sport as we are able to follow anything that involves kicking a ball (The African Cup of Nations is being DVR'd in my house, and I probably won't watch much of it, but I need to DVR the games just in case I do miss something).
Also, another blessing is the time difference between Europe and here on the east coast. There is nothing better than at 7:00 AM, on a Saturday morning, grabbing an English muffin, a large coffee from Dunkin' Donuts and then watching 6-7 hours of footie, even before a lot of people have started their day off, and how great is it to get out of work on a Wednesday afternoon and tuning into a Nottingham Forest/Sheffield Wednesday match.
I mean, does it get any better than watching a team that is being relegated to the Championship Division (Wigan), beating the Premier League champions and a club owned by oil billionaires (Manchester City), in the world's oldest and most historic tournament? It's not every day that you see the Durham Bulls beat the New York Yankees for a championship!!!!
