Anthromopomorphic football clubs worldbuilding brainstorm.
Welcome to discuss and clash opinions in the comments or DMs!! I’d rather chat with everyone about ideas than just receive likes!!! And when you’re talking with me, forget about whether it’s practical or not!!!
My brain has been overhyping for the worldbuilding lore of the personified football clubs.
Note: The major Matchday Genesis/Fever characters are Clubs. They are the immortal personifications of their football culture and history. When used in this context, the word "Club" will be capitalized for the sake of differentiating the immortal entity characters from just talking about the football club itself.
Age
Football Clubs are immortal entities. They have a long life span.
A Club’s aging process seems to depend on the size of their Club’s fame, wealth, power, and other factors. It should also be noted that existence on Earth/foundation does not play a significant role in a Club’s age, and should not be used as an excuse to "age up" anyone.
A newborn club is always shown as a young child, no matter how much power and wealth they have at the time, and their age progresses from there and its pace is normal like humans. However, the rate at which Club age differs for each, with some Clubs growing extremely quickly (such as Real Madrid and Man United, while others have remained children for over a thousand years (such as Leipzig, who was founded in 2009). Their aging process continues until they hit their 20s, afterwards, they do not age anymore. But there are some cases where clubs stop aging in an early age because of factors such as power and wealth.
Relatives
It is not directly stated about how family relationships work. However, if Clubs share a city and are considered derby, they are siblings. But it does not 100% apply to every derby known. Adopted familial relations also exist within it.
Animals
They have pets depending on the logo or club’s nickname, mascots can also be pets.
Examples include:
Liverpool’s liverbird (A mythical creature known in Liverpool)
Arsenal’s Gunnersaurus (Although it is often mistaken as a lizard, and clubs claim there is no such dinosaurs species as “gunnersaurus”)
Barca’s cat, based on the current Barca mascot Cat Culer; although Barca also has Clam as his other pet, which is a one eyed human. (Respecting the timeline from 2003-2018, Clam is considered the only Barca mascot)
Emma is Dortmund’s bee pet.
Language
Clubs are quick learners, and are able to learn the languages of certain footballers/managers/owners in order to understand them.
Examples include:
Arsenal being fluent in French because half of the players are French (Henry, Viera, Giroud + Arsene Wegner)
Chelsea being fluent in Russian because of the Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich.
Bosses
(The same text here is stated again here When a Club refers to their "boss", this most likely means their current owner of the club, such as a CEO, owner, or other leader. They do not appear frequently but are shown during the times of their term/reign and often interact with their respective Club. Many figures have been named rather than shown. In addition, a number are unnamed in the source material, but who they are supposed to be can be indicated by their appearance.
Leaders are aware of their club being represented by an immortal human entity, but despite that, they often treat their Club(s) as a subordinate. There have been many instances depicted of leaders withholding information from their Club, not listening to their Club, or giving their Club orders they are supposed to obey even if they do not wish to do so. Clubs do not seem to be able to disobey these orders, and often do have different opinions or desires from their leaders or do disobey orders, however, fear and force have sometimes been used to keep them in line. Clubs themselves also are shown to not have much control over actual decisions, usually having little to no power at all in choices that will impact the performance. They may talk to/advise their leaders, but humans make the decisions and Clubs are often unable to resist.
Roommates
If there are more than 2 clubs in the same region and are considered “derbies”.
Examples include:
The London clubs living together (at least some of the time). This includes Arsenal & Tottenham (North London derby), Chelsea & Fulham (South London derby) etc.
Family
While they do not have a particular family, the Nations often treat the Clubs as children. They can take their last name from the Nation.
Besides Nations, football managers or owners can be also the parent figure of the clubs, while the players are siblings to the clubs.
Body pain
The Clubs tend to feel pain when a power struggle happens in their economy or power.
When a Club’s economy goes through a recession or any other sort of crisis, it causes them to catch a cold. If caught, it quickly becomes contagious and spreads to other clubs.
Disappearance/Death
Usually when the culture or the Club’s personality dies/disappears, the club would gradually disappear or entrust him/herself to the club that takes him/her over.
There are also cases that he/she is not a club but continuously living as a representation of a smaller, much unknown club. It never happens as clubs are immortal. But some of them can become a normal human, therefore can’t see football clubs.
Relatives
The use of the word "brother" or other familial terms to refer to another character does not inherently mean those two characters are related or view each other as family. Liverpool is one of many clubs where familial terms are used as a sign of respect amongst friends or with a person who is older/younger than you. Real Madrid, for example, calls themselves the big brother/sisiter/sibling of Europe because he wants to be looked up to, not because they are literally family.
It is different when characters say "I am your brother" or "You're like a brother to me" versus saying "Big Bro Madrid is here" or " X is a Big Sis like character".
There are also several different words in different languages (Japanese?) that all translate to brother in English but mean very different things. For example, Denmark and Norway call each other "kyoudai" and "anko" respectively, which both can translate as brother (and are sometimes used by actual brothers), but their use is more often in a Yakuza/shield brother way and have a connotation more like "bro" or "best friend".
Some claim that Arsenal, Tottenham, and Chelsea are descendants of London due to them all coming from London, but this is not canon. There is nothing in this universe that supports the idea that they are related to each other: this has never been stated or implied by any of the characters. The same goes for Seville & Valencia and different Spanish cities with characters such as Sevilla, Real Betis, Valencia, Levante, Barcelona, Espanyol, and Girona. Speaking a language in the same family does not mean characters are related to each other.
Also having the same species (Valencia & Levante as vampire siblings) does not also mean characters are related to each other.
Canon relatives are:
Liverpool & Everton: Siblings
Man United & Man City: Siblings Real Madrid & Atletico: Siblings
Dortmund & Monchengladbach: distant relatives
Valencia & Levante: Sworn siblings
AC Milan & Inter Milan: Twin sisters. (Although they share San Siro, who is their father figure.)(San Siro, however, does not appear much in their lives, so Italy and Romano often look after them)