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Thanks to global TV, an improving national team, and a growing recessional need to consume alcohol right away in the morning, Americans are discovering what the rest of the world calls football. Since the close of the World Cup, many of us have turned to European club football to keep the fix going, and for most, that means watching English Premier League telecasts: it's exciting, we can understand the announcers (more or less), and in our time zones it leaves a large portion of Saturday or Sunday still usable.
Of course, few of us have natural allegiances to Premier League teams. So we're forming artificial ones. We like to win while we drink, so you'll see mostly Manchester United and Arsenal jerseys in American soccer pubs. Chelsea, not so much, for some reason. Liverpool is popular with Red Sox fans (if not the other way around).
Well, winning may get you high. But what happens when you do nothing but get high all the time? Pretty soon high is just normal. And everything else is depression.
Some of us want to follow a club that's more than a mechanism for gloating.
Some of us want to follow a club for which the rewards aren't tied only to victory.
Some of us want to follow a club for better or for worse, to Europe or to relegation, 'til death or beyond.
For this writer - and for the rest of the small but spirited bands of zebra-striped Geordies and Geordie-wannabes tucked in remote corners of American soccer pubs on weekend mornings - that club is Newcastle United.
If you're a real Toon Army Geordie reading this in Newcastle, I'm here to tell you: your passion for your club shines all the way to America. The roar in St. James' Park, even on TV, has its own special timbre. The transplanted Geordies among us carry themselves with a distinctive loyalty, a tested toughness that's hard not to admire. When it goes badly on the pitch, there's sadness and anger, but rarely despair or ridicule, as you see when the tide turns on the front-runners. Some of us have read about the 'Geordie blubber,' the emotion, the tears. But a Geordie can take a punch. That's the fighter I want next to me.
And when it goes well, there's nothing like being on the Toon side. As was the case in my local soccer pub last Saturday morning, when, surrounded by Arsenal fans, I and six fellow Magpie sympathizers watched Arsenal fall victim to the lack of quit in Newcastle's supporters and their heroes. After the greatest comeback in Premier League history - causing the Toon table to mob each other in the center of the room after the equalizer as if one of us had scored it - I saw worse than rage on the Gooners' faces. I saw envy.
The Toon Army's online presence can be a bit intimidating for neophytes, and some English fans are understandably wary of growing U.S. involvement in their national pastime. So this blog has been conceived as a place for Newcastle United supporters in America to form a bond worthy of the club we've chosen - and also, hopefully, as a place for authentic and willing Geordies to drop in and contribute and maybe even benefit occasionally from our distant but broader perspective. In wildest dreams there are shirts and badges and trips across the sea, a section at St. James' on a chilly Tyneside day... but for now, perhaps it would be enough to start by simply asking the reader, via the comment button below, to say who you are and how you got to this site and this club.
Howay the lads.