QUIZ: Answer these 5 questions and we’ll tell you your ‘hip’ foreign football club

Everybody needs a favourite foreign football club. It’s something to turn to for salvation when your domestic club inevitably fails you and just think about how cool you will look talking to your mates about a team they’ve never heard of before.

We’re here to help you – just answer these 5 simple questions to find out who your really hip foreign football club should be:

Question 1: What would you like your football team to be associated with?

A) Progressive politics and an effort to make the club as inclusive and open as possible

B) Years of successful fan protests which have led to one of the best examples of a ‘fan-owned’ business models being established

C) Strange and bizarre post-match celebratory traditions

D) Communist loving revolutionary ‘ultras’ groups

Question 2: What type of stadium do you like?

A) Traditional with four stands and a close, intimate position to the pitch

B) A big modern dome capable of retaining electric atmospheres

C) ‘Out-of-this’ world spaceship style elements protruding out of the roof

D) Wide and open with banked terraces and a traditional European running track bordering the field

Question 3: Where’s your ideal trip away?

A) I want to see the cities – take me to the industrial heartlands of Europe

B) Somewhere rich with culture, but close to a beach so I can relax and let go of daily life

C) I’m going to a brand new place, somewhere they do things completely different

D) An old traditional town, with a healthy dose of the Med Sea and somewhere I can mix with the locals to see how they live their lives

Question 4: What’s your drink of choice?

A) A bold and brash aggressive pilsner to be enjoyed in huge 1L steins

B) Forget the beer, my poison is a tasty sangria I can sip the night away with

C) Lager is for old men and boring losers, pass me an aromatic hoppy pale ale

D) We drink to enjoy, not to get wasted – I’m going for a clean and crisp glass of red

Question 5: It’s time to eat, what are you having?

A) Something meaty - a bratwurst with a side of schnitzel

B) Tapas baby!!!!

C) Meat is murder – get me something that hasn’t harmed animals in the process please

D) Whether it’s morning, noon or night, it’s pizza for me

ANSWERS:

If you answered mostly A your team is. . .

St. Pauli – Hamburg, Germany:

League: Bundesliga 2.

Founded: 1910

Stadium: The Millerntor Stadion (capacity: 29,546)

A club devoted to change off the pitch, St. Pauli were the epitome of a mediocrity until a culture shift in the mid-1980s, when an influx of students, anarchists, hippies and punks to the region began supporting the club.

Today their merky brown strip and iconic skull and crossbones badge is an icon for politics in football, with attempts to end homophobia and their ‘refugees welcome here’ campaign having gained worldwide notoriety.

If you answered mostly B your team is. . .

Real Oviedo – Oviedo, Spain:

League: Segunda Division

Founded: 1926

Stadium: Estadio Carlos Tatiere (Capacity: 30,500)

Staring potential extinction in the face, after back-to-back relegations from Spain’s top division left them struggling for cash, Real Oviedo’s die-hard fan-base mobilised to raise funds and eventually saved the club - an effort which came to be known as the Espiritu 2003 (the Spirit of 2003).

Now financially stable, this sleek Spanish outfit are owned by more than 40,000 supporters in over 190 different countries.

If you answered mostly C your team is. . .

Portland Timbers – Portland, OR, USA:

League: MLS Western Conference

Founded: 2009

Stadium: Providence Park (22,000)

Portland Timbers are everything good about the ‘American soccer dream’, the MLS (without the tacky commentary and cringey fan-bases). With a season ticket waiting list of over 10,000, the Timbers are one of the best supported clubs in the MLS and their ‘ultras’ are pretty mental too.

Located in the corner of the Providence Park, the ‘Timbers Army’ are renowned for their incessant noise-making and South American inspired pyrotechnic parties. But the most wonderfully bizarre thing about this club is their unique goal celebration; each time a Timbers player scores, the club’s very own lumberjack hacks off a round of log, which is presented to the ‘lucky’ goal scorer as a 'trophy' at the end of the match.

If you answered mostly D your team is. . .

AS Livorno Calcio – Tuscany, Italy:

League: Serie B

Founded: 1915

Stadium: Stadio Armando Pichi (19,238)

Located in the heart of communist Italy, Livorno are a club of hard-left, Lenin loving, hardcore football fans. With regular homages dedicated to Che Guevara and Fidel Castro, this once Serie A stalwart are the Italian kings of choreographed stadium displays, regularly covering the entire curva nord of their dilapidated stadium with commie tifos flying high. Their club anthem, Bandiera Rossa (the Red Flag), can often be heard being belted out by the thousands of Livorno ultras.