July 24, 2006

Soccer Jews

One paragraph jumped out at me in Bill Simmons' long piece about picking an English Premier League team to root for. Simmons was talking about Tottenham Hotspur, the team he ended up choosing, and he wrote:

As a reader explains, "Way back in the day, other English teams' fans would derisively jeer Tottenham fans, stereotyping them as Jews and calling them just about every anti-Semitic name you could call someone. So, the Hotspurs fans just turned the jeers around, proudly proclaiming themselves a 'Jew Army' and -- despite the fact that most weren't even Jewish -- embraced the imagery wholeheartedly. Just to spit in the face of the racist idiots who misidentified them in the first place."
I think I'm going to have to adopt them as my team, too. And in the meantime, I think the Hotspurs are needed right about now in Northern Israel.

Posted by Stephen Silver at July 24, 2006 03:43 PM
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