Our growing international fanbase

[awest]

Well I'm a manc who moved to Devon after 40 odd years of living within 2 miles of the new stadium. I still travel up to every home game. I've followed City all over the place since 1973, watching them at over 70 grounds, and this is the greatest period i have ever witnessed for obvious reasons.

I only see utd, chelsea and liverpool shirts here but i would love to see more city shirts worn on the streets as it would make me feel warm and cosy inside. I welcome all newcomers from all over the planet to jump on the Manchester City supporters bandwagon. Being a city fan isn't about being a manc, it's about being a blue. We've done the backs against the wall stuff over the years, it's now time we moved forward as one and took over the world.

Welcome!

 

[adammck]

As a poster mentioned before, when people travel to Barcelona, a lot will go watch them play for the attraction. These type of visitors most likely go and buy a heap of merchandise and spend more on a match day then most regulars. They are apart of our business plan and rightfully so. As much as you may not like it, we will start to steal some of United's market share with this particular group of visitors.

The biggest challenge for the club is maintaining is core fan base and integrating these new visitors in to the match day experience. My biggest fear is the atmosphere on the day, I really will cringe the day when it looses its electricity, there are signs it's already happening. I hope they can somehow sort out a vocal home end without pissing off too many other season ticket holders.

But we should be happy to see our growing fanbase overseas and around Manchester. We as supporters and the club need to find a way to make sure it looks after everyone and creates the best match day experience possible. I do have faith, everything they have done has been superb, we are so blessed!

 

[MAXXI]

The blokes over to see Silva play sound more like tourists than City fans to me.

And remind me how people suddenly buying City shirts and telling everyone how they are massive City fans are any different than the legions of sad fucks from down south, Ireland, Malaysia, etc, who profess to be huge United fans purely because they like the idea of others seeing them as associated with a successful team.

Oh yeah, it's because they are now wearing City tops and are "part of a brilliant, growing international fanbase".

And you can save the 'outdated attitude', 'we need the money', 'who are you trying to tell what to do' replies.

I am neither trying to tell anyone what they can or can't do or interested in trying to do so. I will however, still hold the same personal opinion on the childishness of the motives of people attaching themselves to a successful football club that has absolutely nothing to do with them, regardless of what shirt they are wearing. (And I don't include tourists in that as any genuine football fan would want to go and see all the top class football available to them when visiting somewhere else, that's a totally different matter)

What an idiotic moronic and stupid attitude

 

[Bill]

said it before, blues are blues.simple as.

we need people to spend money at our club and i dont care where that money comes from.

 

[Wheelsy]

Don't know how much credibility my opinion holds, but...

I think as long as the "new fans" have enough respect for the club and its supporters to learn about what it means to be a City fan and become intertwined in the culture of the club, then fine. If they're making a long journey to come to games, then fucking brill.

It's the ones that comment on the Facebook page with "Man City the citizen are best in EPL" or "Barca pride of Spain, CITY pride of England" for example whom need lynching.

 

[halfcenturyup]

The biggest challenge for the club is maintaining is core fan base and integrating these new visitors in to the match day experience. My biggest fear is the atmosphere on the day, I really will cringe the day when it looses its electricity, there are signs it's already happening. I hope they can somehow sort out a vocal home end without pissing off too many other season ticket holders.

That's the thing. The owners need to make sure that the local fan base continues to grow and play the biggest role in the stadium. I have no doubt our owners understand that and will make sure it happens.

For the rest, I think everyone welcomes as many people following the club and buying City merchandise as possible, despite some semantics as to whether these people say they are "fans" or not, or "love" the club or not. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter. It will happen, just suck it up and enjoy the journey.

Oh yes, the reasons we took such great pleasure in using the plastic fans jibe with United are: i) because it was the only thing we could hit them with, now we have other things, like being better than them; ii) United priced their local fanbase out of the stadium, so it was doubly funny, I doubt City will do that.

 

[2sheikhs]

Someone in a Russian national team tracksuit top (I think, it had "Russia" written on the back and was the right colours) sat in the front row of 102 who isn't normally there. Presumably Russian, he had that familiar look of a Russian to me. He was very quiet but enjoying himself and seemed happy when we scored.

We get more tourists on Champions League nights it seems to me but no one should complain about that as long as we aren't selling it out with our normal fans - said tourists would struggle for tickets if we were.

I imagine a lot of casual visitors are up in level 3 where the general sale is usually quite restricted to?

Sounds like he might be russian.

 

[S04]

Does anyone really think that you can rival the big brands without becoming like them?
As one carmaker looks very much like another, and all of them with their devoted "fans" worldwide to boot.
Is the opinion of say a Porsche owner in Germany more valid and authentic than a British one?
Is Italian Ferrari fans entitled to know the one truth of what makes a Ferrari fan?

This "local club" bollox became a pipedream when a long time ago players ceased being locals..It´s stated by some as an act of faith failing to realise that there are many of us here that had the rags as our "local" club really.

 

[M14Exile]

Born in Cheetham Hill in 1955 was perfect timing to enjoy the great City sides of the sixties and seventies. So lucky to watch the best team in the country from the best stand in the country. The thing is though, this had no bearing on me being a blue.
I was born to be a City fan, never had a choice, never wanted a choice, no second team, City were the only team. Like so many of our supporters my induction to Maine Rd was down to my Dad, passed down through generations.
I have the greatest respect for "out of town blues" who adopted our team in preference to more successful teams, particularly back in the dark days. I hope we don't become too arrogant to think only Mancunians are true blues.

Fast forward now to present day City and our ambitions to be a world power. In order to achieve this we will need a large global fanbase and obviously the more success we enjoy the more this fanbase will grow.
I'm sure a lot of blues will look down on these fickle supporters, but I welcome them. As long as our support base is growing it means we are doing the business on the field and that my fellow blues is what it's all about.

I have lived in Thailand for the last 26 years now and there is more and more interest being shown in City, actually our profile was raised a lot by the Taksin takeover and has been steadily growing ever since. Like it or not, there is no stopping it now, we could of course sign Jo, Samaras and Corradi, that could redress the balance.
A sign of our newly elevated profile was made obvious to me last week, whilst in a nationwide sports store (Super Sport) an Arsenal display section was being ripped down to be replaced by...........well you know who.

PS This is the best City side I have ever seen, Colin Bell is still the king to me though.
CTID

 

[i went to rotherham]

Do they have to be labelled as 'glory hunters' because they have travelled a distance to come and watch the mighty blues?
Do they have to be vilified because they don't measure up to your mental picture of a 'true manc'?
Do you have to assume they are jumping on the bandwagon just because you haven't seen them at the stadium before?

Every year I take my two lads to another country, for a break, and we take in a game ie Barcelona, Real Madrid, AC Milan etc etc.
Not because we suddenly want to become a plastic, but simply because we love football and want to see the best in action......teams, players & stadiums.

Time to embrace the fact that we now have something that people from other parts of the world want to see....David Silva, Sergio Aguero, Mario Balotelli etc

Didn't see too many tourists queuing up to watch Barry Conlon & Co not so many years ago!