For foreign Everton fans, I think they tend to either:
A) Have some reasonable connection with the club
or
B) Were 'chosen' by something.
PL football has gotten globally big only in the past 20 years or so, and Everton have obviously not been a club du jour during that time...you don't tend to get Evertonians with only a passing interest in football or a glory hunting nature.
Liverpool are a global brand at this point, so people tend to pick them, or United, Chelsea, or Arsenal if they're not actual football fans that pay attention week in/week out. It's not even "glory hunting" perse, it's more "brand sniffing".
Both for me. I'm new here.
I told a bit of my story in the 'say hello' forum.
In the '00s-'10s the USA national team put together a decent squad (by CONCACAF standards) and started doing ok in international competition. I became a fan. I closely followed the 2010 World Cup where we were in the group with England and drew 1-1 and went through. Right around that time, my daughter was born. I took over baby duty from my wife on the weekends and, being up in the early morning with a baby asleep in my lap, I found the PL. Of course I knew Howard and although I just missed Donovan's loan spell I saw that he had played at Everton also.
The American hook drew my interest, but the passion of the fans and team and the atmosphere at Goodison pulled me in. Simple as that. I never had an interest in a "bigger" club, or in any other club. Like they say, the club chose me. The "People's Club" and the fact that it's at its roots a working-class club - this feels like home to me.
Since then my American sporting interests have faded and Everton is my #1 passion.
One of the things I appreciated from the start was that Evertonians didn't look down their noses at American players, as so many others did (with some justification). The attitude I felt was, well, if you play hard and love pulling on the Everton shirt you're ok with us. When Donovan decided to go back to MLS, because he wanted to go home to LA and help build the league, many laughed at him for leaving Europe and going back to a football backwater, but I saw many Everton fans on social media saying they respected his decision to go home, because that's an Everton value.
In my contacts with native Evertonians, I've never been made to feel anything other than welcome. My wife was walking around near our home in Brooklyn a couple of weeks ago with her NYC EVERTONIANS supporters-group T-shirt on and she came across a family from Liverpool visiting New York. They were Blues. They stopped her on the street. They were stunned to see her shirt and asked her is there really such a thing, you have an American accent, you're not English, and she's like yep, we watch every week. It was really funny, they were thrilled.
Having said that - there's the thing where the more people get introduced to something, the more its character changes and it gets away from the qualities that its supporters love about it. It's like when you're a hardcore fan of an indie band, and then all of a sudden they get massive and the sound changes and the fans that were there at the beginning feel left behind. I'm respectful of the Blue culture. I recognize that it developed over decades in a small community. Now the games are streamed all over the world and I can talk with all of you on the internet about them. To grow, the club needs more cash and international fans are a good way to get it. I'm looking forward to my first Goodison trip, which I'll be planning for November - December as soon as the fixture list comes out. But I don't want to be that guy who by virtue of being one more incremental fan from overseas helps destroy the character of the thing, know what I mean?
Anyway I'm rambling.
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