Which Premier League (or EFL Championship?) team should I root for?

I'm a 43-year-old American who wants to learn about soccer. Help me get started.

On Sundays living in Austin, Texas, you can often find me in Mueller with my older son going to Thinkery, a children’s museum.

Right across the road from Thinkery sits B.D. Riley’s, an Irish pub that, well, absolutely looks like an Irish pub from the outside. We’ve been to Thinkery umpteen times, which means we’ve walked by B.D. Riley’s umpteen times, almost all of which have included people clad in red watching soccer in the outdoor area.

I quickly learned B.D. Riley’s is a “Liverpool bar,” which means supporters of the fabled English soccer club gather to watch matches, and presumably drink.

On April 27, my son and I did our usual Sunday thing. Breakfast at home with mom, followed by a mid-morning trek south to Thinkery. On this particular Sunday, there was a lot more red than usual streaming into B.D. Riley’s. Like, a lot more.

The scene had a much different feel to it. Not only were there a lot more fans milling about, but everyone seemed either on edge, excited, or both.

Something was afoot, so I broke out my handheld Google machine.

As it turns out, if Liverpool defeated Tottenham Hotspur that day, it would secure the club’s first top-level domestic title (in a non-COVID season) since 1989-90. In this case, the Premier League, which has served as England’s top classification since 1992.

I am very much a soccer novice, but it wasn’t hard to grasp the enormity of that. The pre-match scene as my son and I made our way to Thinkery left an impression.

Everyone looked so charged up, so ready to have fun, so ready to celebrate, that I wanted to see what the big deal was. After seeing the scene at B.D. Riley’s, I decided to dive in and finally see what the big deal was with soccer, but where to start?

I know very little about soccer. I grew up in the United States, falling in love with the NBA, college basketball, the NFL, and, more recently, finding a real passion for college football in the last decade.

I’m a child of the 1990s, so I remember very vividly when the World Cup came to the United States in 1994. That experience absolutely spawned a generation of new soccer fans that latched onto English soccer. Plenty of my friends are soccer fans, living and dying with the Premier League and whichever club they root for, but it just never clicked for me.

Let’s see if we can change that during the 2025-26 season.

I intend to dive into soccer, but to do that, I need a club to root for. To find one, I need some help.

Below is what I think I’m looking for. Please, feel free to chime in and offer an opinion, either in the comments section here, or you can find me on Twitter (I’m never calling it X). FYI, my DMs there are open.

I’m a stupid American trying to learn something I don’t understand.

Will you help me?

Should I actually be rooting for an EFL Championship team instead?

A friend posed this question to me after I told him I was starting this Substack, and honestly, it’s not a bad idea.

I understand how the promotion/relegation system, so is the move to, not pick a Premier League team, but rather grab onto a high-end EFL Championship team and spend next season rooting for promotion?

My knee-jerk instinct is, no.

The thinking here is, even if my team gets promoted to the Premier League, it spends the following season getting steamrolled against Premier League competition and potentially gets relegated again? Do I have that right?

That feels like a vert frustrating fan existence, but one thing at a time.

Watching your Championship team getting promoted to the Premier League is probably very awesome, which makes that a possibility worth considering.

Talk to me, folks. Is this something I should do?

I don’t want to root for an established super power

I grew up a Yankees fans, and frankly, I cannot bring myself to root for the English soccer equivalent.

To this end, unless someone has a fascinating argument, Manchester City and the like are going to be out as options.

Which clubs are on the come up?

I don’t want to root for a super power, and I would rather not root for a bottom feeder with few resources and no chance of real success.

That means, I want to know which clubs are on the rise and can potentially challenge, not necessarily to WIN the Premier League, but at least be largely competitive and maybe challenge to finish in the top four and qualify for the Champions League.

Again, the very top of the food chain does not intrigue me, nor does the very bottom. Show me some options that are at least in the middle of the pack, but with a legitimate chance to rise and contend.

A sense of community

Remember, this idea is based largely on the scene that unfolded that Sunday morning outside B.D. Riley’s, dozens of people coming together to root for their favorite team.

To me, that’s a huge part of this, the ability to share this (and drink beers) with other like-minded fans. This is not a necessity, and it 100% depends on where I’m living, but it would be nice to root for a team big enough to have sort of fan club, which potentially meets up at specific bars for matches.

For this factor, living in Austin is a huge plus. After taking a quick spin through Reddit, it appears at least half the Premier League has fan clubs, with all of them laying claim to specific bars for matches.

What fun would this be without sharing the joy and, yes, the misery of fandom?