To the casual observer, soccer supporters might appear to constitute a kind of undifferentiated mass, a gathering of people (male, by and large) strangely mesmerized by a sport commonly featuring score lines as seemingly absent of drama as 2-1 and 1-0, or a crowd distinguished only by their local, tribal custom of donning jerseys colored red or blue or white.

To the outsider, soccer fans are both inscrutable and hard to tell apart. (I was once asked, for example, by a kind, elderly woman if I’d ever taken my son to “Trafford Bridge.”) But if you spend a little time in soccer circles, you’re sure to develop a more nuanced perspective on the committed soccer fan, and before long you’ll recognize that they are by no means all the same. To the contrary, you’ll see that they fall into a variety of types.

Indeed, if you spend a good deal of time pitch side, or in the pub, or in the online discussion groups dedicated to the game, you’ll come to the inevitable conclusion that there are, in fact, precisely four kinds of soccer supporters.

Which leads to two important questions: which kind of soccer supporter are you? And which kind annoys you the most?

Here’s a simple taxonomy to assist you in formulating your answers.

1. The Pragmatic Supporter
This soccer supporter has an almost uncanny ability to take the positives from each match, no matter how dismal the result for his team. He can comfortably offer balanced analysis of his team’s strengths and weaknesses over the office water cooler, and he seems genuinely interested in observing the long-term process of building an incrementally more successful team. He demonstrates respect for opposing sides and admires talented players no matter what team they play for. Other soccer supporters find him a bit bewildering.
Where he sits in the stands: In the family section.
Preferred pub: Enjoys visiting pubs supporting rival teams when traveling for work.
Weekend soccer league position: Central defender in an over-40 league, known for his calmness on the ball.

2. The Divine Right Supporter
More common than the Pragmatic supporter is the Divine Right supporter. You’ll recognize him by his habit of believing that his team possesses a God-given right to win every match. You’ll notice his fondness for blaming referees for calls they’re likely to make before the match has even started. This supporter hates the opposition – all opposition – as well as TV commentators and the press in equal measure. Negative observations made about his chosen team are considered an affront to nature.
Where he sits in the stands: Behind the goal, adjacent to the visiting fans.
Preferred pub: Frequents the same supporters pub exclusively. Only. Ever. Always. (The one nearest the KFC.) Sometimes naps in a spare cot in the back room upstairs.
Weekend soccer league position: Insists on playing striker despite being five foot two.

3. The “Little Abramovich” Supporter
This variety of supporter is marked by his bottomless loathing for everything about his own team, including its kit, manager, first team players, reserves, chief executive, mascot, stadium, and sponsor. He’s easy to spot because he has crazy transfer window dreams involving the most unlikely convergences of star managers and international players. After the window closes, he wants to fire the manager even if the team is in first place.
Where he sits in the stands: Way, way up in the middle section so that his endless directives to the “idiots” on the field are sure to drown out the voices of the TV commentators nearby and be heard by millions.
Preferred pub: Those where swearing is actively encouraged.
Weekend soccer league position: Fancies himself a play-making midfielder. Routinely kicks the ball out of bounds.

4. The Schadenfreude Supporter
Frequently to be found offering up zippy one liners in the comments section of the online sports pages, this soccer supporter is okay with his team losing the majority of their games provided its nearby rivals are doing even worse. He actively roots for all other teams to fail in lieu of rooting for his team to win (since they almost always can’t), and exhibits a boundless enthusiasm for discussing the misfortunes of other teams’ stars – including injuries, criminal cases, tabloid scandals, and red cards.
Where he sits in the stands: Never actually attends matches, only sort of watches them on television, and blogs snarky comments the entire time.
Preferred pub: Doesn’t leave the house much, to be honest.
Weekend soccer league position: Has never actually played the game himself.

Notwithstanding the extensive research I put into developing this piece, you may feel that my list is neither comprehensive nor error free in some of its details. Feel free to offer up your own alternative descriptions of soccer supporters below. But don’t forget to tell us which one you resemble, and which one you least enjoy having to sit next to at game time.

When these two teams last met in the Premier League back in mid-October, Queens Park Rangers was sitting comfortably at mid-table with 9 points from eight matches while Chelsea held third place with 19 points, just three points off league leading Manchester City. It was, by all appearances, going to be just another garden variety Premier League match. Chelsea hoped to close the gap at the top, and QPR undoubtedly hoped to round out their three losses and three draws with a third win. Very quickly, of course, it turned into something else entirely.

Within 10 minutes David Luiz bumped into Heidar Helguson in the box, resulting in a penalty, which Helguson duly converted. Some 23 minutes later, Jose Bosingwa was issued a red card, and a scant eight minutes after that Didier Drogba faced the same fate. Most notably, sometime in the second half, John Terry allegedly verbally abused Anton Ferdinand by way of a racist epithet. Famously, QPR held on to win the match against their 9-man opponents.

What happened next?

A great deal. But perhaps not what one would have expected. Chelsea did not rally, but neither did QPR take much advantage of the moment.

Indeed, for Chelsea, their captain, John Terry, and their new manager, Andre Villas-Boas, it looked to be the beginning of the end. By the close of the calendar year, Chelsea had racked up five losses in 19 matches, and were sitting in a, relatively speaking, lowly fifth place – a feat not even the much beleaguered Phil Scolari had managed before getting the sack.

But the effects of that October match had worn on QPR as well, and by the end of December they were sitting 17th in the table, two points above the relegation zone. Little more than a week later, QPR manager Neil Warnock was fired and replaced by Mark Hughes.

About three weeks further on from there, John Terry was stripped – once again – of the England captaincy. And a month later still, AVB paid the price much as Neil Warnock had. Both teams seemed to be spiraling downwards.

But it hasn’t quite worked out that way.

And isn’t this what makes the English Premier League so exciting? Fortunes change, and mysteriously so. Six months further on from that fateful match, we look ahead to the return fixture. QPR is a point outside the relegation zone with everything to fight for, while Chelsea is on a remarkable run of form with just one loss, four draws and 10 wins in all competitions since Roberto Di Matteo took over the club. Indeed, Chelsea has made it to the finals of both the FA Cup and – more astoundingly – the Champions League. In the EPL, they are fighting against long odds for a chance at a Champions League spot with only four matches remaining in the season (a struggle that could be rendered redundant if they are able to defeat Bayern Munich on the German side’s home ground in the Champions League final, thereby automatically qualifying for next season’s Champions League).

So will tomorrow’s contest be just another garden variety EPL fixture? Unlikely. If this season has taught fans anything – whether they be Arsenal, Liverpool, Man City, Man United, Newcastle, Spurs, Wigan fans and so on – week after week, fortunes turn. That was then, this is now. And there’s only one way to learn what happens next – tune in tomorrow and see.

Photo by Gilyo

As a Chelsea fan, I woke to the best news of 2012 on Sunday when I read on Facebook that Chelsea had announced, only a few minutes earlier, Andre Villa-Boas’s departure and Roberto Di Matteo’s appointment as interim manager.

Watching Chelsea’s loss to West Brom on Saturday, I had suggested the very same change myself. I’m thankful that the Chelsea hierarchy came to its senses and made the change now rather than wait until Tuesday’s FA Cup replay with Birmingham or the following week’s second leg Champions League match against Napoli.

I’m aware that there were a few Chelsea supporters, players, and employees, as well as television commentators and news journalists, who as late as this week believed AVB deserved more time, but I have no idea what those people were thinking. Even from Boston, MA, a distance of more than 3,200 miles from London, I could see that Andre Villas-Boas was nothing more than an abject lesson in how not to lead.

And if the Chelsea hierarchy want to show some leadership in response, they’ll have to raise their hands and admit they made a very significant error in judgment by bringing AVB in and by keeping him in the manager’s seat as long as they did.

While there’s little question that Chelsea could benefit tremendously from stable management, it has been painfully obvious to a growing number of Chelsea fans for many months that Roman Abramovich, Bruce Buck and Ron Gourlay would be making a huge mistake in rewarding AVB’s underperformance with more time simply because the trigger finger may have been too itchy in the past.

Personally, I thought Ancelotti was a terrific manager, and the team would be far better off today, I believe, if he’d been permitted to come back for a third season. However tepid the team’s results in Ancelotti’s second season (they still managed second place in the Premier League, a whisker ahead of Man City), Ancelotti’s leadership and communication were always calm and assured, and he appeared to be much admired by the players.

In two seasons at Chelsea, I never heard Ancelotti blame a result on a referee. But when Chelsea chalked up a loss in only the sixth game of this season, after an away match at Manchester United, AVB immediately pointed a finger of blame at the referees when an examination of his own tactics – the much discussed high defensive line – might have proved a more useful place to draw lessons.

But the catalog of AVB’s mistakes is voluminous – poor team selections, mind-boggling substitutions, an immaturity when dealing with the press, pride in place of common sense, humiliating players who’d given much to the club and delighted fans for years, spending millions on players who would earn only a few minutes playing time, loaning the most promising young talent away, talking down his own players in the foreign press, and – worst of all in my opinion – pitting the players against one another. Witness David Luiz recently characterizing Frank Lampard as a mere “employee” of the club.

Recall also the January 2 match away at Wolves when, after Ramires’ 54th minute goal, the team’s Brazilian and Portuguese quartet — Ramires, Luiz, Bosingwa and Meireles — ran to AVB to celebrate, whereas when Frank Lampard scored the match winner in the 88th minute, he, Fernando Torres, and others celebrated in the far corner of the field without a glance in AVB’s direction.

More recently, AVB claimed that he didn’t need the players to back his “project” (which largely seemed to be oriented around disassembling and weakening the team), only the owner needed to back him. Today he must realize that his brand of leadership deserved support from no one.

The Chelsea hierarchy have made another expensive error, without question – but it is far better to endure that expense now rather than watch the costs mount with time, particularly if the team face the real possibility of missing out on Europe next season. To allow the risks to mount would be a case of throwing good money after bad, and that’s both bad business and bad leadership in its own right. And while the squad’s readiness to face Birmingham in the FA Cup and Napoli in the Champions League is far from assured, the team has in the past demonstrated a capacity to improve through these interim periods – as they did under Guus Hiddink.

Let’s allow Di Matteo a chance to see out the season and, hopefully, earn Chelsea a Champions League spot for next season – and perhaps even a chance at the FA Cup title. If the summer brings a Pep Guardiola or – it is conceivable? – a return of Jose Mourinho, or some other experienced and capable manager, terrific. What matters most at the moment, though, is that the players close the book on the last eight months and consider the immediate future – namely, the opportunity to make themselves and their fans proud again.

Losing, as every soccer fan knows, hurts. But losing streaks are far worse.

Watching our teams stumble through a run of bad games becomes almost unbearable. The pain is searing. We feel personally affronted, gaping at the last minute set-piece defensive collapse from the comfort of our living rooms. Or we join the indignant barroom mob in howling at the awful back pass gone astray. Or, as the stoppage time opportunity to equalize sees the ball sailing into the upper stand, all around the stadium we grasp at our heads in unison, fretting, as Nick Hornby once put it, miserably in the cold.

Afterwards, we have only to endure the teasing emails from friends, the bloodcurdling Facebook commentary, and the gloating press coverage. The players are too old! The manager doesn’t understand tactics! The owner is too impatient!

What starts out as a mild bout of feeling under the weather blossoms, week by week, into a raging sickness as our teams’ annual season-crushing November collapse settles in for an overlong visit. In our darkest moments, we wonder whether there is any cure at all for this gnawing pain – anything at all to hold us over until our teams can once again put together a short string of one-game-at-a-time, back-to-back wins against lower table strugglers and cup competition also-rans. Anything, at least, to keep us from cursing viciously at the TV in front of our children.

Laughter, they quite rightly say, is the best medicine. But, then again, they also say that misery loves company. Maybe we can find the best of both worlds by sharing a laugh at our misery.

For me, nothing captures the desolation, the absurdity, or the rueful hilarity of a losing streak like Michael Palin’s genius-era Ripping Yarns episode “Golden Gordon” of 1979.

Set in 1935, the story focuses on Gordon Ottershaw (Michael Palin), lifelong fan of the Yorkshire Premier League side Barnstoneworth United. Week after week, Gordon returns home from another dismal match to tear apart his living room and throw furniture out the window. “Eight bloody one!” he howls, as his wife clutches a prized clock, rescued from the mantle piece. “They’re a team of old age pensioners!” Gordon sputters. “The center forward wears glasses. During the match! Eight goals! Four of them from back passes to the goalkeeper!”

To console himself, Gordon heads off to the local pub and duly tears the dartboard from the wall and smashes a tableful of glasses.

Who among us hasn’t wanted to do the same?

And who can blame Gordon? Barnstoneworth United don’t even have enough shorts for every member of the squad, they can’t field enough players for the next match, and – worse – a local scrap merchant wants to buy the team’s pitch and convert it into a scrap heap.

In the end, Gordon convinces the scrap mogul, Mr. Foggen, himself a childhood fan of Barnstoneworth United, to allow the team to play one more match, and off Gordon sets in a frantic effort to recruit the team’s former heroes out of retirement for the sake of their beloved club. The ending, as you can imagine, is an uplifting one. Because the better times always return in soccer, don’t they? Not only do Barnstoneworth United win the match, but Gordon’s wife actually encourages him to destroy the living room out of sheer happiness – even handing him the heirloom clock to throw out the window only recently held together with tape.

Our own teams may struggle with the odd AWOL striker, the celebrity midfielder in the stands with the 18 month injury, or the ingenue defensive back who gives away penalties at random, but in the end, they all come back – they all come through. And so do we.

Soccer is a family matter in our household. My lovely wife will eagerly watch two or three English Premier League matches with me every weekend. My 12 year old son will check in on scores between sessions with FIFA 11. My 10 year old daughter will draw upon her burgeoning fluency with the game to accurately estimate stoppage time – even if only to more accurately calculate when she can finally have the TV to herself again. About that time, my son will appear in his youth league uniform and neon blue cleats, waiting for me to drive him to his weekly game where I will take up my position on the sidelines as his coach.

Judging by what I hear from some of my soccer friends – whose families or girlfriends remain resolutely indifferent to the sport – I know I have it pretty good, from a soccer fan’s perspective. In fact, in this otherwise harmonious domestic set up there is only one slightly discordant note to be heard: See, I am a true blue Chelsea fan while my son walks about the house openly supporting Manchester United, donning a bright red jersey no less.

Sure, I’ve considered having him psychoanalyzed, but I know enough about father and son relationships to recognize that there is no cure for this condition. My young son is merely trying to show me that not only can he recognize a terrific team when he sees one but also that he can make his own way in this world. As his father, I know that I have to support him in this – and of course I can only admire his pluck.

So with his 13th birthday approaching, young manhood looming ever closer and, incidentally, the 20th season of the Premier League just getting under way, I decided there was only one thing to be done: Book a father-and-son trip to England over a late August weekend to visit Stamford Bridge on a Saturday and watch Chelsea take on Norwich City, then head up to Old Trafford on the Sunday to witness Man United host Arsenal. Remarkably, my wife wholeheartedly endorsed the idea (I told you she was lovely). Off we set, then, to share in our love for the beautiful game and fathom the unsubtle differences in the blues and reds that run deep within our respective veins.

Arriving in London with a Friday to spare, we took in a stadium tour at Stamford Bridge. When our friendly guide gave the group of us the chance to experience what it’s like to line up outside the dressing room doors and head out of the tunnel and onto the edge of the pitch, I lined up on the home side while my son lined up on the away side and offered me a knowing smile. Later in the Chelsea Megastore, however, a small frown began to form on his face. He’d already gotten me to agree to purchase a cheap soccer ball for a kick-about in the park that afternoon, but of course the only footballs in the place were all covered in Chelsea logos. Under the circumstances, though, he did what he had to and picked out a blue one, after generously consulting me for my opinion, and off we went.

The next afternoon, we arrived early at the Bridge to pick up our hospitality tickets and enjoy a pre-match lunch in the Zola Suite. We were seated at a table with three other pairs of fathers and sons. Mine had done me the honor that day of wearing his Lampard jersey, and we spoke not a word about the United away jersey that lay waiting for him back at the hotel.

As the match began, Chelsea sparkled, scoring early on a 25 yarder from Bosingwa. Chelsea’s passing in the first 15 minutes was so sharp and deft, it was perfectly reasonable to imagine a 4-0 final scoreline. But the game grew tense as Norwich fought back. My son kindly commiserated as Chelsea’s passing talent faltered, and even more so when the hapless Hilario collided with Ivanovic, leaving Norwich’s striker Grant Holt standing alone with the ball in front of an open net and an easy chance to score, which he instantly took. Later in the second half when Drogba landed so hard on the pitch, out cold from a head-on aerial collision with Norwich’s keeper Ruddy, my son’s mood was as grave as mine. But some minutes later, when Ruddy brought Ramires down in the box, earning a much-deserved red, and Lamps fired in the go-ahead goal from the spot, my son leapt out of his seat to cheer as loudly as me. And as if to prove just what a decent boy he is, he did the same again deep into stoppage time when Mata scored Chelsea’s third and final goal of the match on his debut appearance. It had been a difficult match, but Chelsea had vindicated themselves with a win, and we felt the rush of being a part of it all. As we walked away from the Bridge that evening, inspired by my son’s generosity of spirit, I promised to be as supportive of him and his team the next afternoon.

And then there we were – both of us for the first time – at Old Trafford. With my son sporting a brand new Rooney jersey freshly liberated from the United Megastore, I snapped his photo in front of Matt Busby’s statue. I had to admit that my boy looked pretty cool, even there in that sea of red. A short while later, his footsteps noticeably quickening their pace as the turnstiles opened, I followed my son into the Theatre of Dreams and we found our seats behind the press area. In the end, neither my son nor Manchester United needed much from me in the way of support that afternoon. By the middle of the first half, Welbeck had split the Arsenal defense and put United on the scoreboard first. When Van Persie missed his chance to equalize from the spot, my son was visibly relieved – but he needn’t have worried, as it turned out. There were plenty more United goals to come. I continued to clap politely while my son thrust his fists up toward the rafters seven more times over the remainder of the match. The joyous noise from the crowd approached pandemonium as the game wore on. It was a ruthless display from United – certainly one for Chelsea to take into consideration in advance of their visit to Old Trafford in a few weeks’ time – and my son was simply in paradise, with a new Rooney jersey and a Rooney hat trick to boot. It had the unmistakable feel of an historic occasion, and even a Chelsea fan had to have felt privileged to see it.

In the relative quiet of the train heading back down to London that evening, I turned to my son and I asked, “So, after seeing Chelsea and United in the same weekend, are you still a United fan?” He gave me the smile again and replied, “I’m even more of a United fan, Dad.” Across the aisle, I noticed another father and son, both United fans, flush with their recent victory.

I might never know the joy that those other Chelsea fathers or United fathers know – of having a son who supports his father’s team. But I know something just as good. Because when Ashley Young put in goal number eight for United that Sunday afternoon and my son’s outthrust arms rose as high into the air as his 12 year old shoulders would take them, he turned to me with a look of awe and wonder on his face, and I could only love what I saw there:  An unquenchable passion for this incredible game.

“So,” I asked, as the train hurried southwards across the changing landscape, “should we make this an annual father-and-son tradition?” “Definitely, Dad,” he said, “definitely!”