I think one needs to go to Europe to enjoy a match.
I would recommend this read
http://www.amazon.com/Bloody-Confuse.../dp/0767928083
It's an clueless American Sportswriter going to England to discover the sport.
Excerpt:
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I felt confounded at mysterious words such as "Hotspur" (that''s the nickname for the North London club Tottenham Hotspur), "Everton" (that''s an actual and first-rate club set in Liverpool), and "Sven-Goran Eriksson" (he''s the dour Swedish former coach of England''s national team). I pictured "West Ham" as some gumdrop village somewhere in the countryside, when it''s a storied club in gritty East London. I feared I would mispronounce the words "Arsene Wenger" in public, for he''s the revered Frenchman who manages Arsenal, the globally revered North London club. I could not for the life of me define "bung," but I felt relief when I learned that''s an illicit and illegal payment, because illicit and illegal payments had a ring of familiarity from American college sports. I had only just learned the home city of the mystically titled "Aston Villa." (It''s Birmingham.) Only after marveling at the sublime TV talent of soccer''s foremost studio host, Gary Lineker, did I learn he''d actually played the game and played it for the national team, belying the habit of former players of becoming unenlightening cliche-spewers. I suddenly learned that in addition to the Premiership, the European Champions League, and the FA Cup, clubs played for a fourth annual trophy formerly called "League Cup" but by now named for a Canadian beer (the Carling Cup).
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