It struck me that I ought to explain a little bit about why we cheer for the teams we do. Well, in part, it’s because I thought we ought to, and I’m the one of us most capable of complex thought and logic. But also, each team has a special something that captures part of what I love about life, and part of what makes you who you are.

So periodically (like during international breaks, long summer holidays, or say, global pandemics that completely alter everything we understand about our lives and ourselves), I want to introduce you to the teams we are tied to.

Our eighth team to meet is a team that kicks off their new season this weekend: Grenoble Foot 38 a team that shows us how loyalty pays off.

Wherefore Grenoble Foot 38?

In the French Alps, there’s a mountain town with a long history of sport. Grenoble has hosted the Winter Olympics, a strong rugby side, and, for over a hundred years a football team.

We aren’t French. Your grandmother wanted to be a French teacher. Your uncles and I still occasionally drop into French when we want to speak without others knowing what we’re saying. But we have as much claim to French culture or heritage as “French Fried Twinkies”.

But Grenoble is special. It’s where I got my first taste of independent living, and my first appreciation of how to do it well.

Who is Grenoble Foot 38?

The Grenoble team we see now is not the Grenoble team of 1892, or 1938, or even 2000 when I knew it.

For as beautiful as football is, for as magical and human as it can be, it is also a business. And though Grenoble is big for its region, it’s not exactly a focal point in French life, so making money on football in Grenoble wasn’t easy. That’s why teams changed, merged, folded, reformed and survived throughout the 20th Century.

That is, until a company called “Index Holdings” arrived from Japan to buy the club and build it into a force. In four years, they moved the team up to the top tier of French football, only to crash back down soon after.

Why did they crash? Simple. They didn’t have the money to pay the players or rent the stadium. “Index Holdings” claimed to make a net profit of 204 Million Yen. In reality, they had a net loss of 605 Million yen. 800 Million off. An 800 million yen lie. I know you’re young, so let’s just put it like this. Their mistake would be like me claiming to have a box of Bunny Graham crackers for your snack, only instead of having a box of Bunny Grahams I had 3 pieces of paper that said “box of Bunny Grahams” on them.

Naturally, without that money, Grenoble couldn’t keep playing at the top league, or the next league, instead they plummeted to the fifth level of French football. Despite a sparkly stadium and high expectations, the team was back to basics. It has taken them nine years to be stable and steady in the second division, back where they were when I first met them.

How are we Grenoble Foot 38?

Like I said, Grenoble was where I first had to live independently. Why? Well, at 17 I went on a study abroad trip to France with my high school friends. After a few weeks of touring, we got off a bus in the village of Annecy and met our host families. Except for me. Mine wasn’t there. Mine wasn’t even in Annecy. I was driven to a meet up somewhere in the country side, put into another car and driven off to the distant city of Grenoble. I was 100 kilometres from my classmates, my teachers, and anyone who knew me.

I was also a massive disappointment to my host family. I spoke enough French to get by, but I wasn’t cool, or cosmopolitan, or full of American bravado. I was a nerdy, skinny little kid from rural Montana, and my super-cool host sister Natalie was stuck with me for a week. The saving grace was that Natalie was dating a guy at the local football academy. We would lie around the flat watching MTV in the morning, eat macaroni and a Cornetto for lunch, then go to the academy to meet her boyfriend, Sebastian, and all of his mates (Mehdi and Mohamadou appear in my journal at the time) before going shopping or swimming or just to hang out in the afternoon.

By the third day the guys had decided I was no threat. I was nice enough, trying my best, and definitely neither strong enough nor handsome enough to steal away a girlfriend. I had decided that they were the kinds of friends I would like to have. Reliable, supportive, and fierce.

Two nights before I left, we went to a house party in a small suburb. We didn’t stay there long before some local French guys began to harangue our assembled gathering. Our crew was, to a person, an immigrant, or the child of an immigrant. West African, North African, Lebanese, Italian, Spanish, Chinese, Romanian, and me, a bewildered American. The French guys wanted to fight, and this crew of friends stood shoulder to shoulder on picturesque cobblestone streets, jostling and jawing at each other.

I never threw a punch. I don’t think any one did. But when it was over and we walked back to the house at 2 AM I thought: you are never alone in the world if you have people you can rely on.

That’s what Grenoble Foot means to me. When I was alone, young men who trained to join the team, made sure I had someone to rely on. When they were targeted, they made sure everyone in the group had someone else to rely on, and I hope I was part of that.

Grenoble Foot 38 wasn’t alone when they found out their owners didn’t have two yen to rub together, let alone 200 million. They had their community, their staff, their players, and their fans. I’m there for them, because they were there for me.