204 nations entered the running for a place at World Cup 2010. From Burundi to Guam to Tahiti, everybody wants to be involved in the planet's most popular spectacle. Click to continue reading...

When I was younger and online shopping wasn't around, I used to buy my electronics in Dixons. I hated it. The customer service there was horrible, stifling to the point where you felt like they... Click to continue reading...

Ever since Toronto FC debuted back in April 2007, its supporters have been referred to by local media as a "sophisticated soccer base." It's patronizing that adult MLS fans with a committed stake in the outcome of matches and a working knowledge of the league table are suddenly pipe-carrying, elbow patched Lobanovskyi's ready with our doctoral theses on the coming of 4-6-0. Click to continue reading...

Guest post time! In keeping with AMSL's series on MLS, Elliot Tucker, author of the fantastic futfanatico.com, tells the story of how the fan culture irrevocably changed after the Wizards moved from MO to KS. Enjoy!
When you hear the word cauldron, a host of cool words come to mind. Click to continue reading...

Greg Thorn writes:

Everything would change for me in 2007 when my wife and I moved to Kansas City. There, I was finally able to get intrenched in supporting an MLS team and quickly began to cheer for an exciting Wizards forward named Eddie Johnson. My support for Kansas City was soon equaled by my support for my new/old favorite team, Seattle Sounders FC.

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Robert R Luker writes:

The MLS and Football in general is going in the right direction in North America. Because of this, MLS needs two things. First, they need to figure out what their goals are. I'm sure Don Garber has them written down, I would just like them to be more transparent to the public.

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Last year during the AFF Cup I met up with Singaporean striker Noh Alam Shah for an interview. We had a great chat, one that greatly exceeded the initial time we had agreed on and covered many topics.
One topic was Indonesian football. Of course he knew a bit about the game here through Pelita Jaya coach Fandi Ahmad and he was really excited by what he had heard of the fans here. Click to continue reading...

It's nice to see the discussion in the comments of Dan's article eventually expanded to include issues of homophobia and gender. My regular reader knows I've been posting on that stuff quite a bit this summer and it's nice to see the topic break into the mainstream fan culture, if only for a minute. Click to continue reading...

Kartik Krishnaiyer believes ESPN missed a big opportunity by not pushing MLS telecasts during their early morning Premier League broadcasts:

Does ESPN simply assume that viewers of the Premier League and La Liga will not watch MLS so they do not waste their time promoting it? Or is this a tacit admission that MLS has maxed out as far as viewers in its current form, and the network is more concerned about building the brand of international football entering a World Cup year?

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People always say that, to understand how far we've come, you need to look in the past. Whilst that sentence probably sounds a bit cliché, it could surely be used in discussions regarding the evolution of the common Premier League football supporter over the last 30-40 years.

If you'll recall, the Premier League has only turned into a global league in the last 10 or so years.

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The Northern Lights of Old Aberdeen
Continuing our occasional series whereby we dip a toe into football fan culture, I thought we'd get up close with the biggest and best Ultra group in the UK. The Red Ultras of Aberdeen are in their tenth year of bringing colour, passion, noise and vibrancy not only to home matches but all over Scotland and across Europe as well. Click to continue reading...

I never met Steven Wells. I always figured I would some day, but that it would be totally random I'd be in some dive bar on a road trip to Philly to see the Fire play the new team there that he, in a small way, helped make happen, the Philadelphia Union. I presumed we'd end up shooting the shit about the Sons of Ben and Section 8 and the good fight to keep American grassroots fan culture alive in the face of the McBeast.

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The current controversy over the vuvuzela at the Confederations Cup in South Africa is hardly the first debate about "artificial" noisemakers used by football fans. In different forms, their use has been common across the world for over a century. So is the vuvuzela an organic instrument of South African football culture we should respect, or a commercialised nuisance that should be banned?

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Interview conducted & edited by Paul Demko.
Over the last two decades, Peter Wilt has been involved in practically every soccer league in the United States. Starting with the Milwaukee Wave indoor team, he's gone on to management posts with the Chicago Power, the Continental Indoor Soccer League, the Minnesota Thunder and the Chicago Fire. Click to continue reading...

And now for something completely different.

I've been writing about South East Asian football for 3 and a half years now. Since then I've added Asian Football Pictures to try and capture the passion and colour of the game in this part of the world.

It has always been my intention to add new ways of covering the game in this region.

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Actually, this guy's been in the pool for a while, but news travels slowly to me. James Lagrange has a blog on CONCACAF soccer, and he's published a preview of the upcoming Gold Cup, surveyed the fan culture in CONCACAF, and ponders what a 16-team Gold Cup might look like. Check it out. Click to continue reading...

With the 2008 Olympic soccer tournament approaching, China is eagerly preparing to completely miss the point: "Zhongguo, Zhongguo ha, ha, ha. Zhongguo, Zhongguo bi sheng," the crowd shouts, simultaneously beating yellow, stick-shaped batons to the rhythm. "Jia you, jia you." Rough translation: "China, China ha, ha, ha. Click to continue reading...