7,500km to Holte End

Or thereabouts.

We don't really know. Google is a little sketchy on the distance from Qwest Field (where our native Seattle Sounders play) to Villa Park, home stadium of our beloved Aston Villa.

Neither of us has even been to Birmingham, much less stood in the Holte End. Although we've lived in other areas of the United States, we call Seattle home--so how did we end up fans of the claret and blue? Like so many of the best things in life, we rather stumbled into the Villa. In June 2008, I decided I needed to follow an English football club. Not knowing anything about football, I chose a club based on their colors. Who can resist claret and blue? While I'd like to say I influenced Aaron, in reality he based his decision on something more substantial--playing FIFA 10. Oh, and watching the games.

So here we are, stuck up in the northwestern corner of the United States, thousands of kilometers and eight time zones away from England. While Seattle is becoming well-known for having the greatest fan support in Major League Soccer, around here we still are met with quizzical expressions when mentioning Aston Villa. Many people have excuses for why they can't follow English football--it's hard to watch the games, they don't understand the cups and leagues, and really, why can't they call it soccer already?

We've created this blog to deal with all this and more. We want to share our Villa obsession, of course. We want to bitch and moan about Emile Heskey, write odes of praise to John Carew, and discuss whether James Milner's hairstyle affects his game. But we also want to share what it's like to be a fan in America. We wake up at absurd hours (well, one of us does) and end up tipsy in mid-day. We're struggling with cheering for fourth place and sometimes the multiple cup names confuse us. And good god, match, tie, fixture? Pick one.

There are many sites you can visit for soccer analysis. You can get the most up to date news from your twitter feed. But here, 7500km from Holte End, you can figure out what it's like to be a fan in America.