My insane method of choosing Newcastle as my EPL club

Here's the deal, I love international football. The pageantry of it all. I love watching everyone rooting for their own nations, even if they don't stand a chance in hell (Ahem, Team USA). It's pretty special to watch an entire nation get behind one singular team and cheer them on, like most have been watching for the last 20 years. I'm stupid enough to even follow the U-20 and U-17 teams. I don't know why, but I do. There are a lot of grainy feeds illegally found and independent research that leads no where a lot of the time. However, It's great supporting your nation.

With a lot of the international tournaments down, I decided to sacrifice sleep, being an American, and start watching the Barclay.. English Premier League. I sat back and decided to find a club to support. Why? I don't know. I wanted a reason to watch every weekend. I write about basketball full-time, but at times I find it tedious to watch random teams I don't get two pennies about.

So, I sat out with FIFA 15 and google in hand to find a team. First and foremost, I set out some guidelines:

1. Cannot be a club known for bandwagon fans. See ya Manchester clubs, Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool. I later added in Tottenham for two reasons. 1) I refuse to root for anything Spurs related, San Antonio or Tottenham 2) Americans seem to lean towards them with their history of American transfers, i.e. Kasey Keller, Brad Freidel, and DeAndre Yedlin. So, their bandwagon ways join the list of teams who are eliminated.
2. I wanted some pretty sweet kits, which are why I considered Tottenham in the first place.
3. They have to play in a breathtaking stadium, too. One with history helps
4. Fans have to either be absolutely insane or pretty awesome.

I first realized how awesome St. James' Park is when I was playing Newcastle on FIFA15. I had Milwall as a manager and earned our way to EPL and were playing Newcastle. The Daunting walls of St. James Place caught me off guard. I had played FIFA just some. When I did play, I stayed in the states. So, here I am mesmerized by how fantastic it looked.

I found this picture on the official Newcastle website that gave me a sparkle in my eye. I fell in love with the stadium.

NUFC.co.uk

I took to google. I read an insane amount of reviews, professional and fan types, and many had put St. James as one of the best in the EPL. It looks as if the stands are built the the doorsteps of God, they're so high. I imagine it to them being right on top of you.

Georginio Wijnaldum said the noise was amazing throughout the match on Saturday.

After going on this conquest to find a team, I started researching kits. That's why Tottenham jumped out, their new kit is pretty sick.

However, as I continued to dig into the plethora of kits that teams rock throughout the season, I came across this one by Newcastle. I loved it immediately.

Footyheadlines.com

I felt it was one of the cleanest this season. I wasn't a fan of the stripes where the back was one solid color, felt it was too much going on. This one, clean, precise and a solid kit.

While I cover the NBA for my independent site, I also have a full-time job. A guy came into my work who just happened to be from Newcastle and told me about the Toon's Army. He also told me about the cheap owner that is Mike Ashley and how he was absolutely done with him. He told me about the planned protests last season and how Ashley finally ponied up some money to sign some players like Wijnaldum.

Many still talked about how Newcastle could be facing relegation, which is probably still true. It helped me find a club who's not full of bandwagon fans, but a fan base that is loyal. Whether or not they're bad or solid, they are there day in and day out., ranked third in attendance in EPL last five seasons.

I still wasn't convinced. I was torn between Southampton, which had solid potential as an up and coming club. I didn't realize they played each other in their opening match. So, decided the winner of the two would be my team.

It didn't take long to realize I had been eating my morning oatmeal and rooting for Newcastle. The first should have been Southampton handball had me out of my bed, screaming at the television. When Southampton had drawn blood first, I was devastated. I sat there thinking, "wow, this much be a shitty feeling all last season."

However, when Newcastle equalized and then took the lead on the Wijnaldum goal, I leaped from my bed cheering. The surprising thing, so did my girlfriend. By the end of the match, we both were Newcastle fans. St. James' Park was thrilling to watch on TV and the team seems fun to root for this season.

While I don't expect Champions League from Newcastle, it's showed some nice resiliency from the club and gained two more fans. The girlfriend even has started looking for potential matches later in the season, where we'll be firmly wearing our new loved kits and cheering on the Toons.

Source: Chuck Chaney http://ift.tt/1NoH9pu

Ranking: 5