Reading FC: The Overture

Welcome to the first post of the Offside’s blog dedicated to the Royals, the Little Team That Could, Madejski’s boys, the royal-blue and white of Reading FC. After a shocking successful first year in the Premiership, Reading is about to remobilize for the 07/08 campaign, fighting off the dreaded second-year doldrums. I hope to be your guide through the season, covering their every move – or at least, I don’t know, every third move or so.

But first, a word of warning/disclosure. If you’re looking for an in-depth tactical and historical perspective on Reading’s football stylings, I’m probably not your guy. Let me own up right away to the fact that I haven’t been closely following soccer for that long; my excuse is that I’m American, hence the “soccer.” After thoroughly enjoying the last few World Cups and European Championships, I finally made the commitment to focus on the EPL last season, helped in part by the fact that you can now actually watch games in America without paying $20 cover or installing one of those SETI satellite dishes in your backyard. One season down, and I’m totally hooked on the entire world of soccer, to the point where I find myself watching random Mexican league games on Univision without knowing any Spanish beyond “Servicio!”

However, in some ways my ignorance is a strength for this blog…or at least that’s what I’m telling myself. Maybe I’m just projecting, but it seems like a lot of Americans are going through the same teenager-esque infatuation process that I’m currently experiencing, awkwardly groping around the world’s leagues thanks to the improved television access and exhaustive internet coverage. My goal then is to use this blog as a document of my blooming obsession, utilizing my still-fresh love for Reading as a frame in which to learn about the game and its culture and then talk about it to you readers. I hope enough of you are interested enough in this quest to join me on occasion, whether you care about Reading or no.

By way of further introduction, allow me to walk through the five reasons I came to choose Reading as my EPL team of choice. I think you’ll find my thought process to contain all the inexperience, arbitrariness, and lack of focus you can come to expect from this blog in the future.

How I Came to Love the Royals

1) They have Americans.

Okay, the first step really was as simple as this. Choosing to follow the EPL was one thing, but choosing amongst 20 teams that I knew little to nothing about was overwhelming to say the least. So, the easiest criteria (after colors or logos, I suppose) was rote nationalism: who has the most Americans? The choice then came down to Fulham vs. Reading…had Fulham’s purchase of Clint Dempsey gone through last summer, my path would’ve been much different (and about 8 places and 16 points less successful). Faced with McBride/Boca vs. Hahnemann/Convey, the tiebreaker went Reading’s way, the tiebreaker being that I just like Bobby Convey for some reason. Of course, he was doomed to get hurt three months in and never fully make it back, but it was already too late.

2) They were new.

There was a nice symmetry to the idea of, in my first season following the EPL, latching on to a team making their debut in the EPL. Of course, I realized that they had existed for a mere 135 years prior to that, and that English football culture is such that the Premier League is only the top layer of a very deep cake. But as far as American awareness of the English game is considered, they were entirely invisible before last year (and now they’re still only fractionally visible, like those ghosts on the Haunted Mansion ride).

3) Their first game.

Holy crap, their first game. I’ll admit I had a couple backup teams ready just in case Reading turned out to be totally unprepared for the top flight, and after they went down 2-0 to Middlesbrough only twenty minutes into the debut on their home field, I was getting ready to go down that list. But after an insane comeback brought them back level right before halftime, and Leroy Lita slotted home the eventual winner early in the second half, I threw the list out. That game said this team may struggle at times, but they weren’t going to go quietly.

That prediction bore itself out in the way Reading fearlessly approached their first season with the big boys. Other than Arsenal (who pasted them 4-0 at Madejski), the team made respectable showings against the Big Four, including a triumphant home draw (funny to write that, but it’s true) against Manchester United in September and road draws at both Stamford Bridge and Old Trafford. And, of course, they ended up 8th, one bad home slip-up on the second-to-last week against Watford being the only thing that kept them out of the UEFA Cup.

4) Their style and look

That Middlesbrough game also announced something else that would hold up over the 06/07 season: Reading play a really, um, open style of soccer. “Open” is what the proper British announcers would call it, others (like, say, a Chelsea goalkeeper) might call it unhinged, I call it crazy and fun. Reading’s strategy on the field seems not too far off from my strategy when I’m playing (usually as the Royals) FIFA, offense-minded no matter who the opponent, lots of action down the wings, some last-resort defense. It gets them into trouble sometimes (particularly the calamitous first six minutes of the FA Cup 5th Round Replay against United, where they went down 3-0 in a blink), but it at least ensures that no game will be dull – the club went until mid-March before playing a nil-nil game, and even then it was probably Portsmouth’s fault.

It’s also worth noting here another aspect of the Royals’ aesthetic; specifically that they appear about as ramshackle as they play. They struck me from the first as like a grown-up British version of the Bad News Bears, led by a pale, skinny redhead (Sidwell), feeding balls to a speedy midget (Lita), with one winger a somewhat awkward Korean (Seol), another who looks like somebody’s Dad (Little), a keeper who looks like he’s really into Metallica (Hahnemann), a couple dudes from Iceland (Gunnarsson & Ingimarsson), and a healthy chunk of the Irish first team (Hunt, Long, and Doyle). All dressed in hoops, which (with apologies to Celtic and FC Dallas fans) are not the most flattering fashion option. Don’t they know about the fattening effects of horizontal stripes?

5) Their relative obscurity

And finally, it’s nice just to cheer for a team that very little people over here have heard of, never mind have any feelings about. At the soccer bar I frequent, I’m pretty much the only fan with only sort of Reading apparel: my scarf and royal blue shirt usually make people think I’m just a Chelsea fan. I’m proud to have not been suckered into one of the Big Four’s bandwagons (though I’ll root for Arsenal in Europe, just for my friend’s sake), or into one of the midtable perennials self-loathing mobs, and even though it’s a little harder to get Reading news and gear, I appreciate the challenge. Apparently it wouldn’t be that much different if I were in England: when my parents where there, I asked them to find a jersey for me, and every Brit they asked responded “why — and how — does your son like Reading?!?”

So that’s the story of how my Reading fanship came to be, in many, many words. Next post I’ll get a little less self-centered and try to summarize the Reading preseason, as gleaned from my hodgepodge of internet sources. Thanks for reading (ugh, how can I say that without it looking like a horrible pun?)

Category: Introduction

Tags: Fandom, Introduction, Reading FC, Self-Indulgence

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