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How Spurs are Perceived Overseas

Apr 10, 2018
47
86
Over the last 10 - 15 years i have traveled a lot and always felt that Spurs weren’t considered a “big” team overseas. Since the Premier League era, with televised matches available world wide, we were always seen as a a medium sized team with the Man U, Arsenal, Liverpool, and later Chelsea, being the clubs most supported.

I have noticed over the last year or two though that this is starting to change following our successes on the pitch, and as much as we may think that foreign fans don’t matter, as they are likely to just support the teams doing well, the financial rewards in having a large overseas fan base cannot be underestimated.

I came across the following which was an interesting read about Spurs fans abroad, which indicated how we are slowly but surely becoming a global brand. They interview fans from around the world and the response is quite surprising: http://coyslife.com/category/interviews/

I’ve also been surprised myself to see local people wearing Spurs shirts in the places I’ve visted recently such as Thailand, Ghana, and even places in Central America.

I would like to hear from other Spurs fans, to see if you have noticed Tottenhams growing reputation abroad. How have Spurs been perceived in the countries you’ve been to? And wear have you been most surprised to see strong support?
 

LeParisien

Wrong about everything
Mar 5, 2018
3,212
8,169
In Paris people very much admire the team spurs have. This is helped by the Pochettino link. The question is whether the team can be kept together.

There are almost no fans of foreign teams among Parisians but that is because PSG are a team who have seen a rapid rise and young people are flocking to them !
 

'O Zio

Well-Known Member
Dec 27, 2014
7,405
13,785
I've lived in a few different countries over the years for various reasons but while I was living in Italy people initially didn't really know much about us. People who were really into football knew that name "Tottenham" (if you pronounced it like Tott-en-ham at least) but couldn't really name any of our players etc., they just knew it was a team. However, while I was there was our CL year under 'Arry when we played Inter and Milan, with Bale steeling the show against Inter especially. After that we were all over their Sky Sports Italia and everybody knew about Bale pretty much overnight. We've only got better and better since then so I imagine we've continued to build on that growth although I haven't been back for a few years.

Before that I lived in Germany and we were pretty much the same in the sense that people who were into football knew who we were but again they couldn't really have told you any of our players or anything. I've compared us in the past to a team like Schalke in the sense that most English fans know that Schalke are a Bundesliga team and they have a big rivalry with Dortmund but apart from that unless you're "into" following the Bundesliga most people couldn't really tell you anything else about them. That's what it was like.

Now live in the US and here we actually have a weirdly big following. You see a fair amount of Spurs gear out and about but still not as much as Utd, Liverpool and Chelsea. I think it helps that right around the time when NBC bought the rights to the show all the PL games was right when we were starting to make a push for the top 4 so right as a lot of people were first starting to watch the league, we were the exciting young team trying to break the status quo of the Sky 4 and all that so I suppose that probably endeared us to a lot of new fans.
 

ralvy

AVB my love
Jun 26, 2012
2,505
4,603
I'm from Guatemala, and people here keep getting surprised when they discover I support Spurs instead of the usual suspects (even @guate found it peculiar). And a couple of years ago, I still would get laugh at because of this, but these days I get more respect and people get it a little bit.

Last year I was spending a weekend in Munich, and was shocking for me to see a Spurs shirt being exhibited at the windows of a sports shop bellow the Cathedral at Marinplatz. I didn't buy it because I wasn't so fond of the kit we had last season and because I was minutes away from meeting my internet crush for the first time.

I also met a Colmbian girl last year at a Seismology class in Santiago de Chile, and when I told her I supported Spurs, she was all like "yeah, they are such a good team! I really like them... and Chelsea are also one of my teams" :facepalm:
 
Apr 10, 2018
47
86
IMO, many Norwegians are some crazy hardcore Spurs fans.

Yea, during my travels i noticed, even years ago before Spurs got big again, that Tottenham were big in Norway. Also in Sweden, and Holland. I think this is because they had access to limited games from England on TV. I think a lot of the support goes back to late 70s and early 80s, to the team of Hoddle, Ardiles etc.
 

ardiles

Well-Known Member
Nov 24, 2006
13,228
40,308
Yea, during my travels i noticed, even years ago before Spurs got big again, that Tottenham were big in Norway. Also in Sweden, and Holland. I think this is because they had access to limited games from England on TV. I think a lot of the support goes back to late 70s and early 80s, to the team of Hoddle, Ardiles etc.


It could be partly due to Thorstvedt and later, Iversen.
 

CousinBilly

Member
Nov 26, 2006
81
6
More people (mostly teens) are wearing Spurs shirts in Asia. The most popular ones are still Utd, Liverpool, Chelsea and Arsenal but we are catching up. Son is a big draw.
 

Armstrong_11

Spurs makes me happy, you... not so much :)
Aug 3, 2011
8,572
19,113
affordable premium TV. Plus technology upgrades helped a lot these days.

Gone were the times where u could only watch what was on the only sports channel u got.

Tottenham, are getting bigger and bigger in Asia.

We still can't beat man utd who has their faces everywhere.... But we are catching the likes of Liverpool and Arsenal who made in roads to Asia before we did.

Over here we could have more Tottenham support. If...... They didn't lose to the national side in a friendly match. That was kinda embarrassing. Seriously we didn't even have an establish semi professional league. Took me months to get over.
 

ardiles

Well-Known Member
Nov 24, 2006
13,228
40,308
affordable premium TV. Plus technology upgrades helped a lot these days.

Gone were the times where u could only watch what was on the only sports channel u got.

Tottenham, are getting bigger and bigger in Asia.

We still can't beat man utd who has their faces everywhere.... But we are catching the likes of Liverpool and Arsenal who made in roads to Asia before we did.


Liverpool still has way too many fans as compared to us, around the globe and especially in Asia. Our next two targets should be Arsenal and Chelsea first. I think it would be easier to overtake Chelsea (fan base wise) because many of their fans are plastics and will move on and support other clubs if Chelsea keeps going downhill.
 

Armstrong_11

Spurs makes me happy, you... not so much :)
Aug 3, 2011
8,572
19,113
Liverpool still has way too many fans as compared to us, around the globe and especially in Asia. Our next two targets should be Arsenal and Chelsea first. I think it would be easier to overtake Chelsea (fan base wise) because many of their fans are plastics and will move on and support other clubs if Chelsea keeps going downhill.

I don't mean this in a negative way.... But Liverpool fans are.......dying out. Most are,in their 60s, 70s. Man Utd has the bulk now. Liverpool is decent.... But it ain't as noisy as before.

City and Chelsea does have glorying hunting fans.... But the passion isn't really there.
 

noggen

Well-Known Member
Aug 21, 2009
1,627
3,323
Yea, during my travels i noticed, even years ago before Spurs got big again, that Tottenham were big in Norway. Also in Sweden, and Holland. I think this is because they had access to limited games from England on TV. I think a lot of the support goes back to late 70s and early 80s, to the team of Hoddle, Ardiles etc.
That's correct. The first game that was shown was Wolves - Sunderland in 1969. A new game every Saturday from then till Premier League era. Then it was pay-tv.
Because of this Norwegians have equal or even more passion for the English football than our own Tippeligaen.

I remember the game that got me to Spurs. Live on the tv '91 Fa cup semifinal vs Arsenal. Gazza! Thorstvedt! From then it has been all about Tottenham.
 

coy-spurs1882

Well-Known Member
Aug 31, 2012
3,989
10,442
the fan base in Hong Kong has grown significantly these years thanks to the friendlies held in Hong Kong and of course most importantly, our performance in the league. still not as popular as yanited, scum, lolpool, chelski but good to see those plastic fans start to hate us instead of ignoring us - which means that they are scared of our rising(y)
 

SlotBadger

({})?
Jul 24, 2013
13,751
43,099
Last year I was spending a weekend in Munich, and was shocking for me to see a Spurs shirt being exhibited at the windows of a sports shop bellow the Cathedral at Marinplatz. I didn't buy it because I wasn't so fond of the kit we had last season and because I was minutes away from meeting my internet crush for the first time.
Most important tangent of this thread...

Did you bang in the Cathedral?
 

T-Love92

Well-Known Assembler
Aug 3, 2017
305
806
I live in austria, many here support Rapid or Austria vienna besides that there is a huge group that follows Bundesliga (Bayern, Dortmund).

In recent years (10-15) there is a growing fanbase for the PL teams. Mainly the obvious ones United, Arsenal and Liverpool, quite a lot follow Chelsea and some West Ham (hooligan movie with danny feckin dyer played a part in that i guess)

we have a Spurs supporters club that has been growing (guess about 40+), but the core are english men living in austria Beside that media coverage of the CL is the only chance to see PL teams on TV - and the unbelievable incompetent "sport journalists" here are hard to take if you have some knowledge about football

prime example: 2nd leg against Juve was on ORF1 which is one of two big public channels here - before the game they've already talked so much bullshit that i had to turn off the audio, starting with how the Spurs team punch above their weight, Kane will go to Real, Eriksen to Barcelona, Pochettino to Real or PSG and "Kieran Dier" to United - how will they cope? The so called pundit who never played outside of the mighty austrian bundesliga - then predicted that Juve will go through, because Spurs sursprised everybody in Turin but that won't happen again. He then went on saying that he don't believe Kane is amongst the best strikers in the world and that he wouldn't make it at Real :facepalm:
 

saidcork

Member
Feb 1, 2013
3
32
I am from Kazakhstan. Like in many other countries, majority of the locals support clubs which had success in recent years - MU, Chelsea, Arsenal in England, Real/Barca in Spain, Juve/Milan in Italy etc. Hopefully our fan base will grow due to our CL and League performance. Also, due to the bad knowledge of english language the fans here watch football on russian channels and are impacted by opinon of their incompetent pundits, which i think doesn't help to attract new fans.
 

'O Zio

Well-Known Member
Dec 27, 2014
7,405
13,785
IMO, many Norwegians are some crazy hardcore Spurs fans.
That's correct. The first game that was shown was Wolves - Sunderland in 1969. A new game every Saturday from then till Premier League era. Then it was pay-tv.
Because of this Norwegians have equal or even more passion for the English football than our own Tippeligaen.

I remember the game that got me to Spurs. Live on the tv '91 Fa cup semifinal vs Arsenal. Gazza! Thorstvedt! From then it has been all about Tottenham.

Yeah I used to know a couple of Norwegians and they were telling me pretty much everybody has a Tippeliga team and then also a Premiership team that they follow too. Apparently it even goes as far as to people supporting lower leagues. One of them was telling me (and I checked it out online so it's true) that East Sterling of the Scottish 3rd division have a massive Norwegian fanclub because there was some feature about them being the worst team in the UK on Norwegian TV and ever since then they've had this weird cult following in Norway as a joke :LOL:
 

'O Zio

Well-Known Member
Dec 27, 2014
7,405
13,785
I don't mean this in a negative way.... But Liverpool fans are.......dying out. Most are,in their 60s, 70s. Man Utd has the bulk now. Liverpool is decent.... But it ain't as noisy as before.

City and Chelsea does have glorying hunting fans.... But the passion isn't really there.

I'm not so sure about that. There are a lot of Liverpool's glory hunting fans who were kids in the 70s and 80s when Liverpool were one of the dominant teams. A lot of their kids picked up being Liverpool fans from them. I know loads of late-20s/early-30s southerners who are Liverpool because of their dad, but their granddad supports local teams for that reason.

I reckon if Liverpool carry on not winning then the kids nowadays are attracted to City and Chelsea so it'll eventually die out, but I think you're a generation out with your prediction unfortunately.

If Liverpool win the Champions League then god help us...
 
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