The Most Hated Sports Teams Ever: Manchester United, New York Yankees amongst others
There are certain teams out there that fans love to hate. Teams such as Manchester United, the Yankees and many others are all hated by all who are not fans of the team. These types of teams are very polarising; the spectators that are fans absolutely love them, and the ones who are fans of another team absolutely hate them. It is usually the teams that win all of the time or the ones with the most obnoxious players/managers/fans that get hated. Sometimes, people just hate them because that is what they are meant to do. There are also teams that engage in dodgy practises that put people off them, but at the end of the day, sports will always have some teams that are hated and loved at the same time.
All sports fans have a favourite team; a team they root for and wish to see win every match they play. Along with this is the fact that some sports fans also despise a team equally as strongly as they love their favourite. It is interesting to note that something about a team makes a person hate them so much that they pray and wish for the team’s failure at every junction. This is sports competition at its best; the desire for one team to win is coupled with the desire for another to lose. The reasons for hating certain teams so strongly are numerous. They range from the fact that a particular team always wins to some dodgy things the team did in the past.
A team that constantly wins is loved and hated in equal measures. For example, Manchester United is a team with a fantastic winning record, and the team has a huge number of fans all over the world. At the same time, there are a large number of people who despise the team and its players. Another team that regularly tops the most hated team list is the New York Yankees. It is said that success breeds contempt, and the Yankees are one of the most successful teams in the history of baseball. They have won 26 World Series titles and the team was home to some of the best players that the game has ever known; the likes of Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle all played for the Yankees. Since they routinely trounced a lot of teams, fans of most other teams started to hate the Yankees, and this trend has continued to this day. The other major reason why people hate the team is because of the owner of the team, George Steinbrenner. Steinbrenner got rid of coaches as if they were trash and changed 23 of them in his 20 year career as the owner. This put so many fans off the team that they defected to other teams in the MLB and started to develop contempt for the Yankees.
This phenomenon was witnessed recently in basketball, when one of the most polarising figures in the game, LeBron James, decided to join the Miami Heat. Fans of James’ former team, the Cleveland Cavaliers, have really started to vent their fury at the star, with some fans burning his jersey in public and others printing t-shirts that say ‘I Hate Miami’ on them. The fans of the Cavaliers loved James when he was playing for them but it seems he was very arrogant in making his decision to choose a team and his tactics really put fans off. The odd aspect about this is the fact that when LeBron was playing in Cleveland, fans of other teams hated him and the Cavaliers in equal measure. Now that he has jumped ship, the Cavalier fans have started to hate him and his new team.
This is the paradoxical nature of fan adoration in sports. Fans only hate other teams and love their own without realising that players can move to their team and move away from their team at any time. Also, fans of a certain team think that other fans are arrogant and thus hate them, and the other side feels the exact same way about the first team’s fans. It is a constant cycle of hatred, but there are those special teams that are universally hated by almost all fans except the team’s own. Maybe people need to start realising that sport is supposed to be all about friendly competition, as too many people tend to forget that when they vehemently start to hate teams.
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