The number of ‘soccer bars�in the USA has gone from zero to hundreds in a matter of a couple of decades. The popularity of the sport has mushroomed since the start of MLS, but more so since NBC picked up the rights to show Premier League games in the USA. So how do you start a soccer supporters club of your own? It’s easier than you think.

A successful marketing campaign by corporate media has finally exposed sports fans in America to the thrills and excitement of top-flight European football. Fans can now watch soccer in cities and States where it had never been seen before, Americans everywhere have taken to the beautiful game like ducks to water.

Obviously, there were many hard-core ex-pat soccer fans in the States, (as well as some locals) before NBC flicked the switch on, some of whom had already formed small supporters groups. They would meet up and huddle under the satellite dish of their local sports bar where the bar staff was only too happy for the extra weekend morning business.

Now thanks to technology and live streaming services, there is no need for that behemoth of a satellite dish on the roof. Every bar, restaurant, home, and mobile phone has access to soccer games from around the world all day, every day, for very low subscription fees.

So how do you go about starting a supporters club for your team in your town or neighborhood?

1 �Pick A Name For Your Supporters Club

Choose a name that is original and witty, and one that clearly identifies your team and location. You can also design a logo for your club and even put out merchandise for your members!

2 �Create Social Media Accounts For Your Club

Using your newly chosen monicker, set up Facebook, and Instagram pages for your group. If you are supporting a popular team, then you are sure to attract lots of followers rather quickly.

3 �Find a home for your soccer supporters�group

This is where things get a little tricky and involves shopping around a bit. First, once you’ve settled on the general area where you want to plant your flag, approach the bar or restaurant owner and ask if they would be interested in hosting a group of dedicated fans whenever the team plays. Preferably you want a pub that will commit to being available for all of your team’s matches, whatever time of day. You should also stay clear of bars that already have soccer supporter groups to avoid schedule conflicts. They will happen, and every club deserves its own home.

Remember you are no longer limited to approaching established soccer bars because every bar is now a potential soccer bar thanks to the availability of live soccer games on TV and streaming services

This is where First Touch can help. We’ve worked with soccer bars in the States for over 25 years and we know of many that would be happy to accommodate your group. contact us if you would like some free advice.

4 �Apply for official sanctioning from the club itself

There are now hundreds of officially sanctioned Premier League supporter clubs in the USA. Arsenal America alone has 87. There is always room for one more, however, and the numbers are only going to grow.

What if my town already has an official supporters group for my team? you may well ask. It doesn’t matter. Liverpool FC has officially sanctioned pubs in Queens, Brooklyn, uptown, downtown, you name it. They even have unofficial bars that are packed out every weekend, proving that sanctioning isn’t essential to the credibility of your club. That’s a testament to the growing popularity and strength of soccer in America.

There are certain rules and conditions for each club when deciding which supporters�groups to sanction. They will let you know what those rules are. The more together you are with your organization, the better chance you will have of being sanctioned.

5 �Spread The Word

Ready to launch your supporter club now? Invite your friends. Start your social media campaign. Leave flyers around town and don’t forget to let First Touch know so we can list you. Build it and they will come. Open the doors and let the good times roll.

6 �Pies

Make sure there are pies. Lots of pies.

Here’s the Best Eleven Players In Scotland for 2020-21

GOALKEEPER

Alan McGregor, Rangers: Yes, the seemingly ageless wonder benefitted from having a team in front of him that was firing on all cylinders from the start of the season. However, he has allowed only eight goals all season and recorded 16 clean sheets. Thankfully (for Rangers), he has another season left on his current contract.

DEFENDERS

Connor Goldson, Rangers: The Englishman has made 50 or more appearances in each of his three seasons at Ibrox. This term, he has contributed goals (eight, to be exact) to boot. As valuable a member of Steven Gerrard’s squad as there is, he is the perfect understudy to�/p>

James Tavernier, Rangers: The ’Gers captain leads, defends, takes set pieces and scores goals a-plenty. Tavernier is arguably the best all-around player in the Scottish game at present.

Borna Barišić, Rangers: Noticing a trend? When your side has surrendered 13 goals in 36 league matches, your defenders are going to get the plaudits. Barišić, in his third season in Govan, was healthy enough this term to make 50 appearances across all competitions. It’s no coincidence Rangers had its best season since his arrival in 2018.

Ryan Porteous, Hibernian: Porteous has been on everyone’s radar for some time. He’s been tipped for a move to Celtic for two years and would likely be on Rangers�wishlist as well were he not constantly tormenting the Ibrox side’s attacking players.

MIDFIELDERS

Joe Aribo, Rangers: You can’t accuse us of front-running with Aribo, who earned Full Scottish accolades last term as well. A dynamo in the middle of the park, he has netted eight goals in 41 matches across all competitions in 2020-21.

Glen Kamara, Rangers: The Finn reportedly had his choice of Celtic or Rangers when he left Dundee in January 2018. That he chose Ibrox finally paid dividends this term. A dogged competitor, Kamara has become a key cog in everything Gerrard’s side does.

Callum McGregor, Celtic: See? We’re not just reading off the Rangers team sheet. McGregor, like his club, had a down campaign in 2020-21, but he is still as talented a player as there is in the Scottish game, and Mr. Reliable as well.

Ali McCann, St. Johnstone: Even we’re questioning our decision to not give the Irishman-by-way-of-Edinburgh Young Player of the Year last week. Celtic reportedly see McCann as the perfect replacement for Scott Brown. However, his current club in Perth already see him as indispensable in their Cinderella run to (they hope) the domestic cup double.

STRIKERS

Lewis Ferguson, Aberdeen: Not the most dynamic XI ours, but we defy you to score against us. And, hey, for the record, the Dons�stalwart scored 10 times for a team that struggled to hit the back of the net. Ferguson, too, is drawing interest from Glasgow’s big two and teams down south, but Stephen Glass will be doing all he can to keep him in the Granite City and have him serve as an understudy to player/coach Brown.

Kemar Roofe, Rangers: Before you say it, we know: Celtic’s Odsonne Edouard is the most gifted footballer in Scotland, and Roofe’s teammate, Alfredo Morelos, is probably next in line. However, Roofe is far more reliable than the mercurial Morelos and Edouard too often seems too disinterested. We’ll take 16 goals in 34 appearances anytime, particularly with the energy with which Roofe plays.

By Dave Bowler

Perhaps that position â€?or more accurately, the importance of that position – has been a little diluted over the last 20 years or so, when it seems like every game, from a bounce match on Hackney Marshes to the World Cup final, is beamed live to every nook and cranny of the planet, but the FA Cup final in particular is still something very special, a Saturday afternoon where everything stops for that game.

The fact that, once upon a time, it was the only domestic club game that you could see live on television inevitably added lustre to it, but the final was only a part of what made the competition so special, a mere component rather than the be all and end all. It was the competition as a whole, the fact that the cup could be “the great levellerâ€? where non-league electricians could take the field with England internationals – and beat them – and where goals and saves that have survived the ages were scored and made.

Cup Magic

There always was something about the FA Cup that made it hyper-real, where every sense, every moment, every reaction was heightened, where it carried just that little bit more import, that longer lasting legacy. That is the very nature of Cup football of course, that there are no second chances to be had beyond a replay, where if you lose, you have to wait for the competition to come around again next year for another chance.

League football might ultimately be the best way to establish the finest team in the land, but it’s a marathon wherein a couple of bad days can be atoned for across the rest of the season. The FA Cup is death or glory. No half measures. It is sport at its most immediate, its most cut-throat, its most undeniably intense.

Once upon a time, football people used to talk of the league game as being their bread and butter. That wasn’t an altogether disparaging take on it because we all need the basics to survive, but it is redolent now of a different time. Looking back to the 1970s, league football was very different.

At the top end of it all, there was no Champions League to qualify for â€?only the champions made it into the European Cup â€?and so perhaps only the top four teams might qualify for any European football at all. With only two sides in the 22 team First Division getting relegated â€?increased to three in 1973/74 – it could mean that come February or March, a lot of teams were doing little more than treading water until season’s end.

Lower Leagues

In the lower divisions, there were no play-offs, the top three in Divisions One and Two going up automatically, the top four in the Fourth Division, relegation taking in the same numbers. Depending on how the leagues were panning out, it could make for two or three months of largely meaningless league fixtures.

In that light, bread and butter was a direct contrast to the champagne and strawberries that the FA Cup offered, even if that wasn’t always quite so obvious on a muddy pitch in Newcastle in darkest January. It made it all the more important that you kept your season alive by virtue of a proper cup run, though that could look very different depending upon who you were.

Non-League Glory

For the non-league sides, qualifying for the competition proper was the goal, and not just because it meant performing at a new level where players could perhaps put themselves in the shop window for a move into the full-time game. For the clubs themselves, it meant an opportunity to take a place on the national stage, bolster their reputation and, perhaps, put themselves into a position where they might achieve election into the Football League itself.

There was no automatic promotion from the non-league game to Division Four back then, but instead a league meeting where the bottom four sides in the Fourth Division had to apply for re-election to the league and where non-league sides could lobby to take their place, the decision going to a vote.

1970s

The 1970s were to prove just how big a role national exposure could play in a club finding its way to the full-time game, the exploits of both Hereford United and Wimbledon seeing them ride the crest of that wave into the Football League.

For the Third and Fourth Division outfits, little has changed since the �0s really. Then, as now, it was all about coming through those first two rounds, avoiding any banana skins, then hunkering down around the radio on the Monday lunchtime after that second round win and hoping that, after FA Secretary Ted Croker had uttered the magic words “Manchester United will play…� their number would come up.

Payday

Getting a huge draw against one of the elite and having the chance to go to Old Trafford, Anfield, Goodison or Highbury was not only the dream of the players and the fans, it was the escape route from penury that the chairman and his bank manager feverishly hoped for.

A huge payday like that and all the pressure on a small club’s financial position could be lifted for the next 12 months �any cup tie meant a 50/50 split of the gate receipts between the clubs after the home team had been allowed to deduct relevant matchday expenses, a financial windfall that could prove transformative.

In the top two divisions, especially for those sides becalmed in mid-table, an FA Cup run was what kept their seasons alive, kept the fans interested, kept them coming through the turnstiles and collecting their ticket stubs and programme vouchers in case that was a passport to a Wembley ticket.

Silver

If a mid-table also-ran fell at the third round hurdle, you would hear their fans saying that the season was over and, in those days before all-seater stadia, when season tickets were much less prevalent than they are today, that could mean a precipitous fall off in attendances.

That could prove disastrous in an era where ticket money was pretty much the major source of revenue. Going deep into the competition could prolong interest in a season into March or beyond, a crucial consideration. Little wonder there was no squad rotation nonsense then.

Perhaps it was because it was so gladiatorial in nature, the delivery of the thumbs up or the thumbs down at the final whistle, that the FA Cup was seen for so long as THE trophy to win, the one that mattered most. Maybe it was simply because it was the oldest competition of them all, the one from which all others, cup and league, sprang.

Upsets

The opportunity for prince and pauper to take the same stage, and for the pauper to sometimes come out on top, was undeniably romantic, but there was more to it for the FA Cup had everything going for it. There was the distant glamour of ending the arduous road at the hallowed Wembley Stadium that built the legend, and the fact that, after 1910 when the FA brought the current trophy into being, teams were competing for what is the most beautiful piece of silverware in all of sport.

These things and more created what became known – and then became cliché – as the “magic of the cupâ€? The Wanderers of 1872, Preston’s invincibles in 1889, the “white horseâ€?final of 1923, Cardiff defeating Arsenal at Wembley, Wolves and their monkey glands, the Matthews final, countless giantkillings up and down the country, it all combined to give the FA Cup absolute primacy on the domestic – and global – stage.

Shankly

The importance of the FA Cup was never better summed up than by Bill Shankly when his Liverpool side defeated Leeds United in the 1965 final, the first time that the Reds had carried off the trophy.

Even though they had won the First Division a year earlier, Shankly saw winning the FA Cup as the culmination of a crusade, wiping away a stain from the reputation of the Anfield club, addressing a failure that he simply could not accept. That was how much the FA Cup mattered to a man who understood football as well as anyone ever has.

Indeed, winning the cup was so important that when his Liverpool did it for a second time in 1974, Shankly concluded that he had achieved enough and shuffled off into retirement.

Kop Idols

In the Newcastle team beaten that day by Liverpool were two future Kop idols, one of them, Alan Kennedy, the player who would go on to score the winner in two European Cup finals for them, also winning countless league titles too. But here’s what he has to say about the FA Cup.

“It is a fantastic competition, it brings everything together. It starts in the summer, July or August and I’ve done that, I’ve played in those early rounds when I finished my career in non-league football. It’s fantastic, totally different to anything else. When an FA cup game comes around, people are more aware of it, they’re excited by it.

So many teams and players have made their name in it down the years. I remember Blyth Spartans getting into the proper rounds and drawing Wrexham, playing the game at St James�Park. I watched the game and I remember thinking, “This is fantastic� Great football, hell for leather, and these guys getting to play on that pitch and giving it everything.

“There’s a sparkle about it that nothing else has. It lifts the players from the mundane league games, whatever league you’re in. Everybody is stirred by it. A good run in the cup, it creates excitement, it brings a bit of magic, it creates some revenue, which is an important lifeline for the smaller clubs too. It puts people into the limelight, even just for a moment. If you’ve ever played in the FA Cup, even in the qualifying rounds, you should be proud that you’ve at least had a go in the competition.�/p>

Amen to that.

“The Magic of The Cup� a series of books on FA Cup history, is available from www.curtis-sport.com

follow the magic of the cup on Twitter:  @MagicOfFACup

Before There Was NBC, There Was The Beautiful Game Soccer TV Show

By Colin Reid

Like many great things, it started in a bar.

The Scratcher in New York’s East Village, was the post-game home for Barnstonworth Rovers, a Sunday league team made up of players from all over the globe, and even a few Americans. During an after-match drinking session, there was talk about doing our own soccer TV show. But, a good one.

Steve had the original idea. On Saturdays he was a beer-drinking Newcastle fan; on Sundays he was a tough Geordie defender; but during the week he ran the design department for a Madison Avenue agency. He had the creative vision and the talent to back it up.

Julian and Gary were editors on a daytime TV show; I think it was Ricki Lake, which was ‘huge’ back then. They were expat soccer fans too, and with access to a state-of-the-art editing room on weekends.

First Touch Gets Involved

Dave played for the Rovers and ran a weekly soccer fanzine (**), so he had connections. I wrote for the fanzine and also played for the Rovers.

We all disliked the desk-bound corporate style of most sports shows of the time, featuring un-ironic, pompous men in blazers. We wanted to do something a bit more samizdat – by the fans, for the fans – covering local soccer and maybe including the nascent MLS too.

I had Metrostars season tickets and while I didn’t sit in 101, I knew some of the Empire SC gang. So, Steve & I somehow ended up inside their drunk bus on a road trip to RFK stadium. Dave had been in touch with the Metrostars and we were promised press passes (***)… we were more than shocked when we turned up in DC and yes, they were there for us.

We ran around the stadium being cheeky, having fun, and trying to make supporters the stars of the show. Hope some of you recognize your younger selves.

The show went out on NYC public access TV (…kids, ask your parents) and we had a party in a bar to celebrate. For the next episodes we tried to polish up just a little bit, and brought in some extra reporting and recording talent to take us outside NYC, but ultimately we couldn’t sustain producing a quality TV show as a part-time thing, so three episodes is all you get.

It was fun. Enjoy.

(**) First Touch is now the longest running soccer weekly in America, as well as a website and mobile app.

(***) I recently found out the Metrostars media liaison was Bob Bradley’s brother. Back then I had never heard of Bob Bradley, but his brother was very helpful!