Nate Gallant: Where does taste lie in sports fandom? Insofar as fandom is reckoned to be something involuntary, handed down to you, an accident of fate or kinship or some other inheritance, perhaps there is no inherent connection. Some non-athletic cultural critics might insist that sports and good taste are, inherently, at some kind of odds. The popularization of soccer — let’s say football — in the US is a good chance, likely ephemeral, to study the intersection of sports and taste.
The US Men’s National Team, long something of a footnote in global football, has achieved a critical mass of talented, European trained players. The US Women’s National Team is also poised to regain their global dominance with the arrival of Chelsea coach, Emma Hayes, a tactician befitting their talent and no less, the coach of the reigning Women’s Super League champions who is also fast approaching a repeat. The men’s world cup will be held across North America in 2026. Lionel Messi, based in Miami, is now the second most popular athlete-celebrity in the US. The MLS has just lost a generational talent from the Philadelphia Union, Cavan Sullivan, but in doing so, is closer to confirming its place as a proper feeder of talent into the top-five European leagues, rather than a retirement plan for its aging, but still commercially viable stars. Things are looking good for US football.
This has produced a chaotic moment of fandom, with heightened interest and increasing connection and community, but without the usual cacophonous noise in the American media or among other sports fandoms. In other words, you can discover some of your own football affinities in a relatively quiet space. Take advantage of being an earlyish adopter and be free to be a fan of anything — players, storylines, soccer's strange cosmopolitanisms, burritos.
You could start by informing yourself. I'd personally recommend listening to any of the edifying and entertaining podcasts on the Men in Blazers network, in particular "Good Vibes FC," where American soccer legends Sam Mewes, Lynn Williams, and Becky Sauerbrunn break down storylines across the women's game globally; or, "European Nights," where the NYT chief soccer correspondent Rory Smith and MIB editor-in-chief Roger Bennett make for insightful and often very funny sports talk, and offer an impassioned plea for a zealous dedication not to any team, but rather to soccer's "globality" and the joy of the game. Alternatively, you could follow me down a significantly dumber, though no less global route: the aesthetics of the soccer jersey.
There will be those in the US who adopt the teams of their home or current state, both MLS or NWSL. However, if you would like to make a choice entirely based on this season's jerseys, I recommend the incredible Pollack-esque San Diego Wave number from the NWSL or the Emerald candy-cane of a jersey from the Seattle Sounders. I want to love my adoptive Washington Spirit's jerseys, but the unadorned CVS logo at their center is somehow one of the worst displays of a sponsor I could imagine. Some jerseys manage this usually unavoidable tension better than others; theirs unfortunately looks like the give-away from an outward-bound style corporate retreat.
Europe presents plenty of other fashion options for the American fan. Arsenal is a popular, though perhaps bandwagon selection for those who have ever had a nice time in London, and their third jersey from last season is, while not quite being in their classic red and white, a quite nice and potentially flattering shade of aquatic green. PSV Eindhoven, one of Dutch soccer’s giants and this year’s surprise runaway Eredivisie A Champaign, is star-studded with Americans, several starters from the USMNT included. Their vintage jerseys are a kind of classic cut of striped football kits, but I am equally amused by the current sponsor of PSV, something called “Brainport Eindhoven,” which sounds more honestly dystopian than the soft-power cynicism of letting a nation-state, or one of its proxies, advertise on your jersey or own your team.
In Ligue 1, in France, root away for Toulouse, former Ligue 2 team who has jumped up through the ranks into European competition with the help of Billy Beane, of “Moneyball” fame's, sports consultancy — a very American storyline. Their kits feature an aggressive purple and embody a kind of busyness of brands illegible to most US viewers, for better or worse. In Italy, I’m too enamored by Serie B Venezia FC’s jerseys this season, particularly this white, orange, and green long-sleeve one, to focus on the many more intriguing teams, fandoms, and storylines from the Serie A season. You could also take a page from Kim Kardashian's lookbook, and get yourself one of the many classic Roma jerseys on offer (here's the one she wore, as well).
There’s a great deal of fun to be had with South American fandoms as well — and one needn't look any further than the Brasilierão’s great Fluminense for some of the most incredible vintage jerseys around, although their current home kit has a very unique colorway, as well. A fan of the late author and journalist Eduardo Galeano? Go for a Uruguayan giant, say, one of these old Peñarol jerseys. Their many Copa Libertadores (the pan-South American club championships) victories are more than a mere reminder of the golden age of national football glory — check out their national team's incredible victory over Brazil from a few months ago on Youtube.
Both taste and authenticity are so fraught when it comes to sport and fashion. You should wear your team's jersey no matter how ugly. But wearing designer clothes is perhaps the very inverse: No matter what you've inherited, you equally should be able to signal participation in some other kind of aesthetic identity. Both are a specific kind of pure fiction, and thus, crossing between the two points us to something of the inherent metonymy of fandom, and maybe even fashion. Such aesthetics, after all, are arbitrary.
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