I'm in Kenya at the moment, a country that loves it's football and a place I used to visit 4 or more times a year from mid 90's through to 2010/11. Wearing a footy shirt is what the younger kids do over here (say 10-25 years old) and many will have big vinyls or paint jobs done on their motatu's (independent buses) that they use to show their allegiance to a club. It's all Premier League. Nothing from anywhere else and almost every game is on live for free everywhere.
Travelling around the place this past 9 days it's really noticeable how absent we've become.
I haven't seen a single fake or real replica kit and just one motatu with YNWA across the back window. Meanwhile Chelsea kits are everywhere, closely followed by United and then Arsenal. A few Southampton / Wanyama tops too, but it's incredible how quickly we've disappeared.
I spoke to a few locals at a bar last night because the Leicester / Villa game was on and asked why. I got what I expected but it shows the importance of winning stuff. It doesn't matter if it's the Capital one or the EL, because here as in Thailand, Vietnam and the playgrounds up and down the UK if you aren't featuring as a regular in the finals of the cups then you aren't relevant.
Fair-weather as fuck obviously, until they've painted their motatu: that kind of commitment has to last for 5 years.
