What Football Club Should a Gheorghie Support: A New Recurring Feature

It's said that genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. Granted, it's hot as fuck here in the mid-Atlantic, but I've never been one to work that hard. No, this bit of genius was 100% serendipitous inspiration. Just let it come to me.

This is the opening weekend of the 2021-22 Premier League football season. For my wife, that signals weekend mornings spent largely with me screwed to the couch watching games. Today, I got a two-hour footy session with my weekly pickup game in before I hunkered down. But hunker I did.

I got cleaned up in time to catch Liverpool down in southeastern England to take on newly promoted Norwich City. The home side had a record-setting season in the Championship last year, winning the league and automatic promotion going away. The visitors were hoping to bounce back from last year's injury-damned season to reclaim their brilliant 2019-20 form.

As the game started, I got a look at Norwich City's dazzling kits. Unlike so many teams that sport various combinations of red and blue, The Canaries play their home matches in vibrant yellow tops with bright green accents. They're glorious, though I couldn't wear that scheme. (I'm more of a winter, you see.)

Here's what I'm talking about:

There's a detail here that struck me as I watched the match. Most English clubs wear the logos of either anodyne corporations (Manchester City/Chevrolet, Liverpool/Standard Chartered financial services, Brighton/American Express, Tottenham Hotspur/AXA) or oddball betting/gaming sites (Crystal Palace/W88, Southhampton/Sportsbet.io, West Ham United/Betway, et al). Not the elegant Canaries. Norwich proudly wears the Lotus emblem front and center.

Lotus, one of the world's fabled automotive brands, shares a Norfolk homebase with Norwich City, and their livery is green and gold, so there's a natural affinity between the two. And as I watched the early stages of the match, another affinity struck me.

So I texted Zman to tell him I'd found him a Premier League team to support. Zman is the most car-savvy fellow I know. I turn to him for all of my automotive queries. He's also very hip to the most upscale of roadgoing brands. (He bought me a subscription to Sports Car Market magazine, which is basically auto porn.) In fact, in his highly-lauded WCWAGD series, he chose a Lotus Elan for yours truly (in green and yellow, which turns out to be foreshadowing of a sort)

Zman should support Norwich City. They play a free-flowing attacking brand of football, so they're easy on the eyes - you might say they like to rev their engines. They don't care all that much about playing defense, so they play of lot of exciting games. Their best player is Teemu Pukki, who's from Finland. Zman loves Mika Hakkinen, Kimi Raikkonen, and Keke Rosberg - noted Finnish Formula One drivers. The Canaries just signed USMNT forward Josh Sargent, so there's a jingoistic angle for the taking.

I promise I'll work a little harder at finding teams for the rest of you. Or not - this one worked out pretty well for me. And Z.

Up the Canaries! And Up the Zman!