I think this is probably one of the best articles ever written in The Guardian's history.
http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2015/jan/29/chelsea-manchester-city-england-world-care
Chelsea v Manchester City: big in England but does anyone else care?
India
On most evenings the fishermen of Benaulim village in Goa leave Pinto’s Bar after sunset and head for their boats for a night’s fishing in the Arabian Sea. On match days that is when Premier League fans show up to cheer on their favourite English clubs. The biggest turnout is usually for Manchester United – still the most popular club in India – but in recent years Chelsea have picked up a significant following across the country. On Saturday night Pinto’s promises to turn into a sea of blue.
“Last time Chelsea won the title we held a rally in the village dressed in blue jerseys and waving club flags,” says Tony Fernandes, a realtor. “Youngsters love the club because of its fighting spirit.” Only Manchester United, Liverpool and Chelsea have official supporters’ clubs in India but Chelsea are the only ones that also have a national group. “Match screenings have been organised in sports bars in 15 cities on Saturday,” said Anand Singh of the India supporters’ club. “We expect a big turnout, even though there’s been no pre-match media coverage.”
Bollywood star Abhishek Bachchan also roots for Chelsea. He showed up in his jersey at last month’s fan park screening in Mumbai. “Manchester United drew the biggest crowd but at least 5,000 showed up for the Chelsea-Newcastle match,” says Singh.
Will anyone cheer for Manchester City? “In Benaulim you can count City supporters on your fingertips,” said Fernandes, but after their recent success the club has picked up fans in the big cities. “After Sergio Agüero joined I said, ‘Wow, that’s the kind of attacking football I like,’” says Aditya Rane in Mumbai. “During the match against Chelsea City fans will be outnumbered. We’ll just have to shout louder. The fondness for a club is like the attachment to the nation. There’s a bond and you can get either depressed or exhilarated.” Maseeh Rahman in Delhi
Rest of Asia
The clash between Manchester City and Chelsea will be the most closely watched Premier League game this weekend in Asia but it will not attract the same passionate attention as some other fixtures in the calendar. The kick-off time does not help. In south-east Asia – the region that loves the league the most – the game starts in the early hours of Sunday morning. For China, South Korea and Japan those early hours are even later. Lunchtime kick-offs are always better.
Chelsea and, especially, City are still lagging behind Manchester United (even if the claims two years ago of 325 million followers in Asia are fanciful), as well as Liverpool and Arsenal and the big two in Spain or the massive one in Germany.
For December’s Manchester United-Liverpool clash Carlsberg Malaysia and Carlsberg Hong Kong organised an all-weekend football retreat for 300 fans of the two clubs. There is no such event planned for this weekend. Admittedly that game, while unimportant in title terms, was an earlier kick-off. In Malaysia it attracted around 1.5m cable viewers, though these are unofficial figures. This Chelsea-City top-of-the-table game will struggle to reach half of that figure.
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City have given their rivals a head start in terms of Asia and success. They are a decade behind Chelsea, two behind United and four behind Liverpool in places like Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia and are light years away when it comes to China, Korea and Japan. Chelsea’s longer and more active engagement in Asia and European success means that these Blues are catching up. Still, though, they lack the historic support of their red rivals.
As the biggest game in the Premier League this weekend the game will get plenty of play in most local media around Asia but for most it will be due to interest about the result and what it means rather than passion for the teams. John Duerden in Seoul
Australia
Most Sundays, at the ungodly hour of 4.30am, the Imperial Hotel on the corner of Bourke Street and Spring Street in central Melbourne is not only open; it is filled with football fans. Premier League replica shirts are on show, sweary shouting can be heard and terrace chants are sung. It is an incongruous assault on the senses but not an uncommon one. A similar scene is played out across Australia in the dead of night every weekend, from the beaches of Sydney to Brisbane’s Riverside, from the northern suburbs of Perth to the Adelaide Casino.
In Australia football is a sport on the rise and the Premier League is a big deal. Every single game airs live on pay TV – a situation that UK-based fans can only dream of – and local hostelries are willing to stay open all night long to give fans a piece of the action.
The Imperial Hotel is just one of many pubs that have adopted a Premier League club, or several, to give supporter groups a venue where they can meet and enjoy a game with like-minded fans. The Imperial counts Manchester City among its clubs and, just round the corner, the Portland Hotel is Chelsea. This Sunday morning, despite it being a table-topping clash at Stamford Bridge, neither establishment is expecting a full house.
That, the manager of the Imperial, Stephen Marrs, says, is partly due to the kick-off time but also down to the teams involved. “If it was a Liverpool derby, I’d expect more,” he says. Early starts can dictate how many fans stay up and watch the game, but Marrs says there are a hardcore who will turn up, no matter what time kick-off is.
In Brisbane those diehards are more numerous. The cavernous Pig’N’Whistle, which has a capacity of 1,000, plays host to both City and Chelsea fan clubs and big numbers are expected this weekend. “I’d be surprised if we got less than 250 to 300,” says Jack Nicholson, an employee at the pub. The time difference means that kick-off is an hour earlier in Queensland but those figures at 3.30am are still impressive.
Whatever interest in the match there is among fans willing to endure a sleepless night has not, however, been matched in the media. Coverage this week has been light to non-existent in mainstream newspapers, television and online, although that, of course, could change closer to kick-off. This week, of all weeks though, it is unlikely. And it has nothing to do with the identities of the two English clubs involved. The Socceroos’ rampant charge into Saturday’s final of the Asian Cuphas captured the imagination of the nation, consumed it (along with Nick Kyrgios’s run at the Australian Open), and meant there are precious few column inches left for coverage of a match being played more than 15,000 kilometres away.
Chelsea and City will kick off hours after Australia discovers if its national side has won a first major football trophy and either wild celebrations will be in full swing or fans will be glumly staring into the bottom of empty schooners. However, thousands of Premier League fans, expats and Australians alike, congregated at venues around the country, should ensure the Premier League encounter will not pass by entirely unnoticed. Mike Hytner in Sydney
United States
Saturday’s match between first-placed Chelsea and second-placed Manchester City is undoubtedly the biggest game of the Premier League season. But does anyone in the US care? Any other weekend, perhaps. Yet Sunday’s Super Bowl between the Seattle Seahawks and New England Patriots has reduced the biggest game of the Premier League season to an afterthought.
“Undoubtedly the hardcore fans in the US can’t wait for this salivating match-up but the game lacks buzz in the sports press here because everything gets overshadowed by the Super Bowl,” Sports Illustrated’s Richard Deitsch says. “There are so many media resources directed toward Glendale this week that it’s very hard for any other event – whether in the US or abroad – to get any kind of traction. Had this happened on any other week, I think the chatter would be different.”
Saturday’s match will be carried on NBC, who purchased the Premier League’s US broadcasting rights in 2012 for an estimated $250m (£165m), more than triple Fox’s previous contract. The deal puts select Premier League matches on over-the-air television and represents a bellwether for soccer’s growing profile stateside. Premier League Live, NBC’s pre- and post-match studio show hosted by Rebecca Lowe, will originate from downtown Phoenix during Super Bowl weekend. In effect the network is appropriating Chelsea-Man City as a lead-in to its blanket coverage of the NFL’s showcase event.
That is not to say Saturday’s match will not move the needle among hardcore fans. The supporters’ clubs for both sides here in New York — Legends in Midtown for Chelsea and the Mad Hatter in Kips Bay for Manchester City — are both expecting overflow crowds. However, the idea of soccer cracking the American mainstream in any meaningful way is wildly optimistic with the Super Bowl hype machine in overdrive. NBC’s most-watched Premier League match was the Manchester United-Chelsea match at Old Trafford last October. That 1-1 draw attracted 1.29m viewers on NBC to rank as the most watched Premier League game since the network began its coverage in August 2013. “I would not expect this game to top it,” Deitsch says. Bryan Armen Graham in New York
South America
The appetite for English football here in Brazil is immense. There are five or six live Premier League matches at the weekend, plus coverage of the cup and Championship games.
Premier League replica shirts are a familiar sight everywhere you go and the interest in football is often wrapped up with a passion for English culture; particularly music. It is not uncommon to find locals who follow a Brazilian club and Manchester United, Chelsea or Arsenal. This should not come as a surprise. The domestic product is in decline. Brazilian teams are bereft of real stars and the football is stuck in a time warp as Kaká lamented at the end of his loan spell with São Paulo last year.
Chelsea versus City is something special because six Brazilians could feature (seven if you count Diego Costa). Both clubs have a good social media presence here and there is a real buzz among the fans. “We believe the game could be the title decider. And it will be the first time that [Frank] Lampard is back at Stamford Bridge. It will be really exciting,” said Guilherme Neto from Chelsea Brasil. João Hugo from Citizens Brasil was also pumped up. “We’re organising a meeting at a pub in Rio de Janeiro … If we win, the gap will be down to two points. City will be motivated and will be up for it as always.”
Fox Sports has the fixture and is billing it as the biggest event in the Premier League calendar so far. “We are treating it as premium content,” said the programming director, Rogério Brandão. “It’s a game that’s really grabbed the fans’ attention … We are giving it high visibility across the Fox family channels. [The match] will be our big event of the week and its repercussions will feed the programme schedule for the coming weeks.”
Gustavo Villani will be the man behind the microphone. “It’s the kind of game that makes me lose sleep the night before. I’ve prepared for days. But the 90 minutes will be over in a flash.” Jon Cotterill in São Paulo
Africa
More Africans now swear by the big five sides – Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester United and Manchester City – rather than for their own local teams. And on the surface it may appear the historic importance of games between either of Manchester United, Liverpool and Arsenal is losing ground to the new money of Chelsea versus Manchester City. “Since the Russian and Qatari funds came into both teams I’d definitely say Chelsea–City is a bigger game now,” says Joachim Tembo, a Zambian sports journalist.
Adeola Olalekan, a Nigerian analyst, posits a contributory factor. “Fixtures grow on success so, as a lot of youth in this generation have no memories of when Liverpool were a force, they switch focus to the lure of Chelsea and City.”
For Liverpool fans across the continent, however, their claim to continuing relevance in these fixtures boils down to history. “It’s the history that matters. Liverpool are United’s closest challenges for top-flight titles and that’s what will keep this fixture relevant in the eyes of Kopites,” Abdul Kadir, a freelance Gambian journalist, argues. “Also, saying, for example, that Liverpool v Arsenal isn’t as big any more is a bit like saying Newcastle v Sunderland is not a big deal because they aren’t what they used to be – it’s illogical.”
But as I have travelled across the continent, the growth of Chelsea versus Manchester City as a fixture is evident because the success of both teams means they are attracting new fans all the time. However, the feeling is that it would take some time before it overtakes the glamour of meetings between the big three, no matter how poor Liverpool, Arsenal and Manchester United have been recently.
Gary Al-Smith in Accra
http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2015/jan/29/chelsea-manchester-city-england-world-care
Chelsea v Manchester City: big in England but does anyone else care?
India
On most evenings the fishermen of Benaulim village in Goa leave Pinto’s Bar after sunset and head for their boats for a night’s fishing in the Arabian Sea. On match days that is when Premier League fans show up to cheer on their favourite English clubs. The biggest turnout is usually for Manchester United – still the most popular club in India – but in recent years Chelsea have picked up a significant following across the country. On Saturday night Pinto’s promises to turn into a sea of blue.
“Last time Chelsea won the title we held a rally in the village dressed in blue jerseys and waving club flags,” says Tony Fernandes, a realtor. “Youngsters love the club because of its fighting spirit.” Only Manchester United, Liverpool and Chelsea have official supporters’ clubs in India but Chelsea are the only ones that also have a national group. “Match screenings have been organised in sports bars in 15 cities on Saturday,” said Anand Singh of the India supporters’ club. “We expect a big turnout, even though there’s been no pre-match media coverage.”
Bollywood star Abhishek Bachchan also roots for Chelsea. He showed up in his jersey at last month’s fan park screening in Mumbai. “Manchester United drew the biggest crowd but at least 5,000 showed up for the Chelsea-Newcastle match,” says Singh.
Will anyone cheer for Manchester City? “In Benaulim you can count City supporters on your fingertips,” said Fernandes, but after their recent success the club has picked up fans in the big cities. “After Sergio Agüero joined I said, ‘Wow, that’s the kind of attacking football I like,’” says Aditya Rane in Mumbai. “During the match against Chelsea City fans will be outnumbered. We’ll just have to shout louder. The fondness for a club is like the attachment to the nation. There’s a bond and you can get either depressed or exhilarated.” Maseeh Rahman in Delhi
Rest of Asia
The clash between Manchester City and Chelsea will be the most closely watched Premier League game this weekend in Asia but it will not attract the same passionate attention as some other fixtures in the calendar. The kick-off time does not help. In south-east Asia – the region that loves the league the most – the game starts in the early hours of Sunday morning. For China, South Korea and Japan those early hours are even later. Lunchtime kick-offs are always better.
Chelsea and, especially, City are still lagging behind Manchester United (even if the claims two years ago of 325 million followers in Asia are fanciful), as well as Liverpool and Arsenal and the big two in Spain or the massive one in Germany.
For December’s Manchester United-Liverpool clash Carlsberg Malaysia and Carlsberg Hong Kong organised an all-weekend football retreat for 300 fans of the two clubs. There is no such event planned for this weekend. Admittedly that game, while unimportant in title terms, was an earlier kick-off. In Malaysia it attracted around 1.5m cable viewers, though these are unofficial figures. This Chelsea-City top-of-the-table game will struggle to reach half of that figure.
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City have given their rivals a head start in terms of Asia and success. They are a decade behind Chelsea, two behind United and four behind Liverpool in places like Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia and are light years away when it comes to China, Korea and Japan. Chelsea’s longer and more active engagement in Asia and European success means that these Blues are catching up. Still, though, they lack the historic support of their red rivals.
As the biggest game in the Premier League this weekend the game will get plenty of play in most local media around Asia but for most it will be due to interest about the result and what it means rather than passion for the teams. John Duerden in Seoul
Australia
Most Sundays, at the ungodly hour of 4.30am, the Imperial Hotel on the corner of Bourke Street and Spring Street in central Melbourne is not only open; it is filled with football fans. Premier League replica shirts are on show, sweary shouting can be heard and terrace chants are sung. It is an incongruous assault on the senses but not an uncommon one. A similar scene is played out across Australia in the dead of night every weekend, from the beaches of Sydney to Brisbane’s Riverside, from the northern suburbs of Perth to the Adelaide Casino.
In Australia football is a sport on the rise and the Premier League is a big deal. Every single game airs live on pay TV – a situation that UK-based fans can only dream of – and local hostelries are willing to stay open all night long to give fans a piece of the action.
The Imperial Hotel is just one of many pubs that have adopted a Premier League club, or several, to give supporter groups a venue where they can meet and enjoy a game with like-minded fans. The Imperial counts Manchester City among its clubs and, just round the corner, the Portland Hotel is Chelsea. This Sunday morning, despite it being a table-topping clash at Stamford Bridge, neither establishment is expecting a full house.
That, the manager of the Imperial, Stephen Marrs, says, is partly due to the kick-off time but also down to the teams involved. “If it was a Liverpool derby, I’d expect more,” he says. Early starts can dictate how many fans stay up and watch the game, but Marrs says there are a hardcore who will turn up, no matter what time kick-off is.
In Brisbane those diehards are more numerous. The cavernous Pig’N’Whistle, which has a capacity of 1,000, plays host to both City and Chelsea fan clubs and big numbers are expected this weekend. “I’d be surprised if we got less than 250 to 300,” says Jack Nicholson, an employee at the pub. The time difference means that kick-off is an hour earlier in Queensland but those figures at 3.30am are still impressive.
Whatever interest in the match there is among fans willing to endure a sleepless night has not, however, been matched in the media. Coverage this week has been light to non-existent in mainstream newspapers, television and online, although that, of course, could change closer to kick-off. This week, of all weeks though, it is unlikely. And it has nothing to do with the identities of the two English clubs involved. The Socceroos’ rampant charge into Saturday’s final of the Asian Cuphas captured the imagination of the nation, consumed it (along with Nick Kyrgios’s run at the Australian Open), and meant there are precious few column inches left for coverage of a match being played more than 15,000 kilometres away.
Chelsea and City will kick off hours after Australia discovers if its national side has won a first major football trophy and either wild celebrations will be in full swing or fans will be glumly staring into the bottom of empty schooners. However, thousands of Premier League fans, expats and Australians alike, congregated at venues around the country, should ensure the Premier League encounter will not pass by entirely unnoticed. Mike Hytner in Sydney
United States
Saturday’s match between first-placed Chelsea and second-placed Manchester City is undoubtedly the biggest game of the Premier League season. But does anyone in the US care? Any other weekend, perhaps. Yet Sunday’s Super Bowl between the Seattle Seahawks and New England Patriots has reduced the biggest game of the Premier League season to an afterthought.
“Undoubtedly the hardcore fans in the US can’t wait for this salivating match-up but the game lacks buzz in the sports press here because everything gets overshadowed by the Super Bowl,” Sports Illustrated’s Richard Deitsch says. “There are so many media resources directed toward Glendale this week that it’s very hard for any other event – whether in the US or abroad – to get any kind of traction. Had this happened on any other week, I think the chatter would be different.”
Saturday’s match will be carried on NBC, who purchased the Premier League’s US broadcasting rights in 2012 for an estimated $250m (£165m), more than triple Fox’s previous contract. The deal puts select Premier League matches on over-the-air television and represents a bellwether for soccer’s growing profile stateside. Premier League Live, NBC’s pre- and post-match studio show hosted by Rebecca Lowe, will originate from downtown Phoenix during Super Bowl weekend. In effect the network is appropriating Chelsea-Man City as a lead-in to its blanket coverage of the NFL’s showcase event.
That is not to say Saturday’s match will not move the needle among hardcore fans. The supporters’ clubs for both sides here in New York — Legends in Midtown for Chelsea and the Mad Hatter in Kips Bay for Manchester City — are both expecting overflow crowds. However, the idea of soccer cracking the American mainstream in any meaningful way is wildly optimistic with the Super Bowl hype machine in overdrive. NBC’s most-watched Premier League match was the Manchester United-Chelsea match at Old Trafford last October. That 1-1 draw attracted 1.29m viewers on NBC to rank as the most watched Premier League game since the network began its coverage in August 2013. “I would not expect this game to top it,” Deitsch says. Bryan Armen Graham in New York
South America
The appetite for English football here in Brazil is immense. There are five or six live Premier League matches at the weekend, plus coverage of the cup and Championship games.
Premier League replica shirts are a familiar sight everywhere you go and the interest in football is often wrapped up with a passion for English culture; particularly music. It is not uncommon to find locals who follow a Brazilian club and Manchester United, Chelsea or Arsenal. This should not come as a surprise. The domestic product is in decline. Brazilian teams are bereft of real stars and the football is stuck in a time warp as Kaká lamented at the end of his loan spell with São Paulo last year.
Chelsea versus City is something special because six Brazilians could feature (seven if you count Diego Costa). Both clubs have a good social media presence here and there is a real buzz among the fans. “We believe the game could be the title decider. And it will be the first time that [Frank] Lampard is back at Stamford Bridge. It will be really exciting,” said Guilherme Neto from Chelsea Brasil. João Hugo from Citizens Brasil was also pumped up. “We’re organising a meeting at a pub in Rio de Janeiro … If we win, the gap will be down to two points. City will be motivated and will be up for it as always.”
Fox Sports has the fixture and is billing it as the biggest event in the Premier League calendar so far. “We are treating it as premium content,” said the programming director, Rogério Brandão. “It’s a game that’s really grabbed the fans’ attention … We are giving it high visibility across the Fox family channels. [The match] will be our big event of the week and its repercussions will feed the programme schedule for the coming weeks.”
Gustavo Villani will be the man behind the microphone. “It’s the kind of game that makes me lose sleep the night before. I’ve prepared for days. But the 90 minutes will be over in a flash.” Jon Cotterill in São Paulo
Africa
More Africans now swear by the big five sides – Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester United and Manchester City – rather than for their own local teams. And on the surface it may appear the historic importance of games between either of Manchester United, Liverpool and Arsenal is losing ground to the new money of Chelsea versus Manchester City. “Since the Russian and Qatari funds came into both teams I’d definitely say Chelsea–City is a bigger game now,” says Joachim Tembo, a Zambian sports journalist.
Adeola Olalekan, a Nigerian analyst, posits a contributory factor. “Fixtures grow on success so, as a lot of youth in this generation have no memories of when Liverpool were a force, they switch focus to the lure of Chelsea and City.”
For Liverpool fans across the continent, however, their claim to continuing relevance in these fixtures boils down to history. “It’s the history that matters. Liverpool are United’s closest challenges for top-flight titles and that’s what will keep this fixture relevant in the eyes of Kopites,” Abdul Kadir, a freelance Gambian journalist, argues. “Also, saying, for example, that Liverpool v Arsenal isn’t as big any more is a bit like saying Newcastle v Sunderland is not a big deal because they aren’t what they used to be – it’s illogical.”
But as I have travelled across the continent, the growth of Chelsea versus Manchester City as a fixture is evident because the success of both teams means they are attracting new fans all the time. However, the feeling is that it would take some time before it overtakes the glamour of meetings between the big three, no matter how poor Liverpool, Arsenal and Manchester United have been recently.
Gary Al-Smith in Accra
