In most American team sports, the playing field is level enough that every team can hope to win titles or go deep into the playoffs. In world soccer, that's clearly not the case - so fans generally calibrate their expectations to their club's circumstances. So I'm curious: how happy are you with your club relative to your expectations for it?
Just two questions for you to answer, really:
1) What club do you support?
2) On a scale of 1 to 10 (where 1 is a tale of rank incompetence and underachievement and 10 is a tale of plucky overachievement you can hardly believe is happening), where would you rank your club on the happiness scale?
Some possible examples I might suggest from a neutral's perspective:
--Huddersfield: has to be a 10, right? This is probably as good as it gets, even if they do wind up getting relegated back to the Championship this year.
--Crystal Palace: I'd guess around a 3 - De Boer looks like a disaster, but at least you're in the Premiership, and the prognosis is not automatically hopeless.
--Newcastle: could be anywhere from a 1 to a 6 depending on your optimistic or pessimistic outlook, I guess.
--Barcelona: Maybe a 4? Real Madrid seems clearly a step ahead at the moment (even if you're two points ahead of them in the early league table), and the board seems awfully directionless.
--PSG: 9 or 10, with the possibility of dropping several points if FFP ever comes into play (but hey, you've got Neymar already and Mbappe is coming, and really, your club could hardly ever be better than this).
--Bayern Munich: a steady 7 - almost certain to win the Bundesliga again, increasingly unlikely to threaten the Champions League.
--Celtic: probably 9 or 10 as well in the Rodgers era (whereas you could have been a 3 or 4 as recently as the Deila era, even as the SPL titles kept rolling in).
Feel free to disagree with any of those suggestions, of course. Also, if you want to factor absolute achievement and not just relative achievement into your ranking, that's fine - e.g., maybe you support Manchester City and still can't believe your lucky stars that you're challenging for the Premier League and have a puncher's chance at the Champions League rather than playing in League One. But you don't have to - I'm curious as to what you feel from your perspective as a fan of your club. Just because your club is threatening to win the title in your league doesn't mean to be happy with it, and just because it's not doesn't mean you can't be overjoyed with it.
Just two questions for you to answer, really:
1) What club do you support?
2) On a scale of 1 to 10 (where 1 is a tale of rank incompetence and underachievement and 10 is a tale of plucky overachievement you can hardly believe is happening), where would you rank your club on the happiness scale?
Some possible examples I might suggest from a neutral's perspective:
--Huddersfield: has to be a 10, right? This is probably as good as it gets, even if they do wind up getting relegated back to the Championship this year.
--Crystal Palace: I'd guess around a 3 - De Boer looks like a disaster, but at least you're in the Premiership, and the prognosis is not automatically hopeless.
--Newcastle: could be anywhere from a 1 to a 6 depending on your optimistic or pessimistic outlook, I guess.
--Barcelona: Maybe a 4? Real Madrid seems clearly a step ahead at the moment (even if you're two points ahead of them in the early league table), and the board seems awfully directionless.
--PSG: 9 or 10, with the possibility of dropping several points if FFP ever comes into play (but hey, you've got Neymar already and Mbappe is coming, and really, your club could hardly ever be better than this).
--Bayern Munich: a steady 7 - almost certain to win the Bundesliga again, increasingly unlikely to threaten the Champions League.
--Celtic: probably 9 or 10 as well in the Rodgers era (whereas you could have been a 3 or 4 as recently as the Deila era, even as the SPL titles kept rolling in).
Feel free to disagree with any of those suggestions, of course. Also, if you want to factor absolute achievement and not just relative achievement into your ranking, that's fine - e.g., maybe you support Manchester City and still can't believe your lucky stars that you're challenging for the Premier League and have a puncher's chance at the Champions League rather than playing in League One. But you don't have to - I'm curious as to what you feel from your perspective as a fan of your club. Just because your club is threatening to win the title in your league doesn't mean to be happy with it, and just because it's not doesn't mean you can't be overjoyed with it.