Yuuuuuuuup. I feel bad for non-Rangers fans in Glasgow the night of the match; I suspect its a pretty uncomfortable few days to say the least.
Into the Cincoverse - The Cinco de Mayo EU Thread and Wikibox Repository
- Thread starter KingSweden24
- Start date
Yuuuuuuuup. I feel bad for non-Rangers fans in Glasgow the night of the match; I suspect its a pretty uncomfortable few days to say the least.
So, any chance we might be able to get some wikiboxes about the US and CS brewing industry in the future? I know we spoke about that in the main thread a bit and ... yeah, I really want to see a wikibox for a more successful Leinenkugel's and Point Special 
As someone who was foolishly in Glasgow the last time they won a major trophy ITTL i can attest to this haha!
Holy crap - I just checked and you're from Aberdeen as well! I'm from the States but doing my PhD over here. Go Dons! (should they ever get ... better
)This Szabo is fictional for whatever it’s worth
How does that work? Can Pm if you want
Oh boy did I poke the hornet’s nest here? 😂 Don’t worry Celtic has European Cups and Rangers doesn’t, much like iOTL!
Sure can throw something togetherSo, any chance we might be able to get some wikiboxes about the US and CS brewing industry in the future? I know we spoke about that in the main thread a bit and ... yeah, I really want to see a wikibox for a more successful Leinenkugel's and Point Special
Ron Atkinson
Ronald Atkinson (born March 18, 1939) is a retired British football manager best known for his spells at Manchester United in the 1980s and Aston Villa in the 1990s. Nicknamed "Big Ron" , he was at one time regarded as one of the best managers in the game and in the 2000s as Britain's most well-known football pundit until his 2011 sacking for making racist remarks live on air.
Atkinson played his entire playing career at Oxford United and bounced around a variety of managerial roles through most of the 1970s until taking over at West Bromwich Albion, which he led to a second-place finish in 1979 and a subsequent fourth-place finish in 1981. At that moment, he was hired as the manager for Manchester United, at one time the top club in the world during the 1960s but since having failed to collect any silverware domestically since their First Division championship in 1967 and their European Cup title the following year. Atkinson quickly led United to a series of strong performances, including the FA Cup final in 1983 and winning the League Cup the following season (their first domestic honor in nearly two decades) while finishing second, to Southampton, in the First Division. The following season, Manchester United would once again place second, this time to Everton, while winning the FA Cup for the first time since 1963. United leapt out to a twelve-point lead in the fall of 1985 and while it was feasting on lesser clubs, they managed to hang on to pip rival Liverpool to the First Division title on goal difference by May of 1986, thus handing them their first league title in 19 years and a consolation for a 1-0 loss in the Cup Winners' Cup against Atletico Madrid. This would be the last major honor for United over the next eight years; Atkinson's side slipped to sixth place the following season, and while they advanced to the 1987 European Cup Final thanks to a last-minute penalty against Porto in the semifinal's second leg, they were decisively beaten 2-0 by Bayern Munich in the last match. Atkinson's following season saw United recover to 5th place but once again fail to make much impact in cup competitions, and after a 6th-place finish in 1988-89 it was made clear by management that a turnaround was required. United led the league table for the first two-thirds of the season before a spring collapse saw them fall to third, and they were defeated by Crystal Palace in the 1990 FA Cup Final, seeing Atkinson's departure.
Subsequently, Atkinson was hired by Burnley to help them return to the First Division, which he successfully did in one season at the helm before heading to Aston Villa, taking over in Birmingham in 1991. At Villa, he brought in a new generation of players who helped contribute to the club's resurgence, winning 1994 League Cup and placing second in the new Premier League in 1995. After dropping down close to relegation, however, he was sacked in February of 1996. He would bounce around at various mid-table managerial jobs for the next eight years, including helping rescue Manchester City from relegation in both 2003 and 2004, before eventually retiring after he was sacked after only three months at Nottingham Forest in 2004.
Atkinson played his entire playing career at Oxford United and bounced around a variety of managerial roles through most of the 1970s until taking over at West Bromwich Albion, which he led to a second-place finish in 1979 and a subsequent fourth-place finish in 1981. At that moment, he was hired as the manager for Manchester United, at one time the top club in the world during the 1960s but since having failed to collect any silverware domestically since their First Division championship in 1967 and their European Cup title the following year. Atkinson quickly led United to a series of strong performances, including the FA Cup final in 1983 and winning the League Cup the following season (their first domestic honor in nearly two decades) while finishing second, to Southampton, in the First Division. The following season, Manchester United would once again place second, this time to Everton, while winning the FA Cup for the first time since 1963. United leapt out to a twelve-point lead in the fall of 1985 and while it was feasting on lesser clubs, they managed to hang on to pip rival Liverpool to the First Division title on goal difference by May of 1986, thus handing them their first league title in 19 years and a consolation for a 1-0 loss in the Cup Winners' Cup against Atletico Madrid. This would be the last major honor for United over the next eight years; Atkinson's side slipped to sixth place the following season, and while they advanced to the 1987 European Cup Final thanks to a last-minute penalty against Porto in the semifinal's second leg, they were decisively beaten 2-0 by Bayern Munich in the last match. Atkinson's following season saw United recover to 5th place but once again fail to make much impact in cup competitions, and after a 6th-place finish in 1988-89 it was made clear by management that a turnaround was required. United led the league table for the first two-thirds of the season before a spring collapse saw them fall to third, and they were defeated by Crystal Palace in the 1990 FA Cup Final, seeing Atkinson's departure.
Subsequently, Atkinson was hired by Burnley to help them return to the First Division, which he successfully did in one season at the helm before heading to Aston Villa, taking over in Birmingham in 1991. At Villa, he brought in a new generation of players who helped contribute to the club's resurgence, winning 1994 League Cup and placing second in the new Premier League in 1995. After dropping down close to relegation, however, he was sacked in February of 1996. He would bounce around at various mid-table managerial jobs for the next eight years, including helping rescue Manchester City from relegation in both 2003 and 2004, before eventually retiring after he was sacked after only three months at Nottingham Forest in 2004.
Seattle Subway - Old System (Lines 3 and 4)
Line 3 - Green Lake to Renton
Line 3 was formed in 1964 during the Subway Rationalization Plan which completely reorganized the Old System's routes to make them more similar to one another in length as the City of Seattle began investing in increasing frequency on the various routes; prior to 1964, it had been the Mount Baker Line east of the Dearborn Trunk (completed in 1934), and the western segment of the Lake City Line on the other side of the Trunk. The Mount Baker Line's opening in 1934 had, initially, extended only to the Mount Baker station near Sicks' Stadium and Benjamin Franklin High School; this had made access to Seattle's newest, fastest-growing neighborhood easier to interline with the rest of the city, not just in downtown but also the booming fisheries and shipping industries on the Montlake Cut, where the Mount Baker Line at that point in time ran. Taking advantage of the fact that the Rainier Valley was only starting to be developed with larger homes and businesses, the city built a cut and cover tunnel down Empire Way, away from Rainier Boulevard (at the time the other main road in the area) and extended the line further throughout the 1930s, first to Othello Street by 1938 and then Rainier Beach in 1940. The rain would keep its original name even though it was now by far the longest line in the city, even moreso in 1948 when the Ballard Extension opened, until it was reorganized in 1964. The Green Lake Half of the Line, for its part, had been opened as part of the 1939 Lake City Line and in planning documents had been called the Central Avenue Subway, a line running underneath the Central Avenue that connects the Civic Center to Green Lake, viewed as one of the city's transportation priorities but in the end part of the third line to be opened.
As the only line extending fully into southeast Seattle, it was an important transportation link compared to the more densely-populated and densely-covered North Seattle lines (not coincidentally in wealthier, less Asian neighborhoods), and was thus a good candidate for extension into areas further south of Rainier Beach. The decision by Seattle City Power to run high-voltage lines into the city in the late 1960s via the Skyway neighborhood thus provided a perfect opportunity to extend the line further, using the right-of-way to build another cut-and-cover tunnel in coordination with SCP to reach Skyway in 1974 and, after a lengthy legal battle with the city of Renton to run the line underground to a terminus in downtown near the commuter rail station, 1986. Initially thought to be the end of this line, in 1993 a new agreement was struck with Renton to extend the line further north, this time all the way to the north end of the city, near the Boeing and Kenworth Truck plants and a major redevelopment site on surplus land intended to become a mixed-use neighborhood. While viewed as somewhat redundant due to long-term plans to place a Soundrail commuter station in the area, the ability of the Subway to quickly build a bored tunnel vs. a lengthy and protracted fight with the USRA about building a new commuter station on their property won out and in June 2000, six months late and thus not in time for the 2000 Winter Olmypics, opened, connecting the "Landing" area in North Renton and suburban neighborhoods to its east to the Subway for the first time. The line posed a serious engineering challenge when the Eastside Extensions on the Lake Washington Floating Bridge, which runs on a viaduct above Rainer Valley to the Beacon Hill Tunnel, opened; an interchange stop between the lines on the viaduct median and the line below was desired, and the challenge of integrating the small transit plaza under the freeway viaduct and building out the infill station at Rainier Viaduct was a major reason for the Eastside Extensions' considerable construction delays and high costs.
The line begins at 85th Street and Ashworth Avenue, at the Seattle City Limits, and then runs south to pass under Central Avenue on the west side of Green Lake, granting names to both the terminus (Green Lake North) and a station providing access to the lake itself (Green Lake West) despite much of the neighborhood's commercial area having evolved on its east over the subsequent years. It connects to the Line 5 on the Crosstown Subway at 45th Street and then continues to 36th Street Station and passes under the cut, adjacent to the Central Avenue Bridge with one brief stop in the Westlake Avenue before stopping at Seattle Central Station, still under Central Avenue. At this point, the line enters the 3rd Avenue Tunnel and Dearborn Trunk, turning south of the Trunk with a stop at Judkins before branching off onto the Mount Baker Line, turning southwest after Mount Baker Station into a tunnel under Empire Way. The line stops at the Rainier Viaduct interchange infill station opened in November 1999, where connections to lines to the Eastside or West Seattle are available along with a bus plaza, and then continues on to Orcas Street, Othello Street and Rainier Beach. From there, the line passes under the City Power Tunnel, as it was named during construction, to Skyway and then Renton, where there are stops at Renton, Liberty Park, and finally Southlake Landing, its terminus.
Line 4 - Ballard to Sand Point
The Crosstown Line was a major priority for the city but was the fifth line to be opened, due to the fact that it did not take advantage of the 3rd Avenue-Dearborn spine that all other lines did; nonetheless, despite not "feeding" the centralized trunk model that city officials viewed as being a huge success and a point of pride for the system, there was nonetheless a desire to connect the densely populated (and wealthier) neighborhoods north of the Montlake Cut to each other without requiring transfers in the city center and backtracking. The Crosstown Line also would have connected Ballard, which until 1948 had no subway presence despite being a major employment and residential center, not only with the rest of the city's subways at Central Avenue (then-Lake City Line) and 10th Avenue (then-Madison Line), but also with the University of Washington and, beyond that, the major naval supply depot at Sand Point, thus meaning that the Crosstown Line would be the first to marginally extend out of the city limits. Thus was a subway run from Ballard to the University of Washington under 45th Street, the main trunk road of North Seattle, and opened in 1948 with its terminus at 10th Avenue, before being extended to Sand Point in 1956 and Golden Gardens on the city limits in 1958. In 1964, it was re-branded as Line 5 in the systemwide reorganziation, but the route pattern for obvious reasons remained identical; Line 5 is the only train that runs on the Crosstown Subway and thus, with headways of six minutes as in the rest of the system, it is the infrastructure that has the fewest trains per hour on its tracks.
The train begins on an interline with Line 1 at Golden Gardens at the city limits and runs to Ballard, but after Market Street it turns east rather than south, with one more stop at Leary Way to provide a stop in the eastern end of the neighborhood. It then runs towards 45th Street, with stops connecting it to Line 2 at Evanston Avenue and Line 3 at Interlake Avenue, and has one stop at Sunnyside Ave that has no connections to north-south lines. At its initial terminus immediately west of 10th Avenue, it provides connections to Line 5, and then stops at Memorial Way, the north entrance to the University of Washington campus. After this, it exits from the hill on which the university sits on an elevated guideway; it stops at the corner of 25th Avenue and 45th Street to provide connection to University Village, formerly a shopping center redeveloped in the late 2000s/early 2010s into a high-density residential eco-district, and then continues along 45th to a stop across from Seattle Children's Hospital (formerly Laurel Station, renamed in 2012 with the inauguration of a pedestrian bridge across the street directly to the hospital facilities) and then finally running on Sand Point Way to a terminus in the southwest corner of what is today Sand Point State Park, about a hundred meters north of the city limit at 65th Street. These three above-ground stations were all completely rebuilt and modernized (part of the pedestrian bridge and eco-district project) in 2010-12 after they had fallen into disrepair and were regarded as three of the most dilapidated stations in the system.
Line 3 was formed in 1964 during the Subway Rationalization Plan which completely reorganized the Old System's routes to make them more similar to one another in length as the City of Seattle began investing in increasing frequency on the various routes; prior to 1964, it had been the Mount Baker Line east of the Dearborn Trunk (completed in 1934), and the western segment of the Lake City Line on the other side of the Trunk. The Mount Baker Line's opening in 1934 had, initially, extended only to the Mount Baker station near Sicks' Stadium and Benjamin Franklin High School; this had made access to Seattle's newest, fastest-growing neighborhood easier to interline with the rest of the city, not just in downtown but also the booming fisheries and shipping industries on the Montlake Cut, where the Mount Baker Line at that point in time ran. Taking advantage of the fact that the Rainier Valley was only starting to be developed with larger homes and businesses, the city built a cut and cover tunnel down Empire Way, away from Rainier Boulevard (at the time the other main road in the area) and extended the line further throughout the 1930s, first to Othello Street by 1938 and then Rainier Beach in 1940. The rain would keep its original name even though it was now by far the longest line in the city, even moreso in 1948 when the Ballard Extension opened, until it was reorganized in 1964. The Green Lake Half of the Line, for its part, had been opened as part of the 1939 Lake City Line and in planning documents had been called the Central Avenue Subway, a line running underneath the Central Avenue that connects the Civic Center to Green Lake, viewed as one of the city's transportation priorities but in the end part of the third line to be opened.
As the only line extending fully into southeast Seattle, it was an important transportation link compared to the more densely-populated and densely-covered North Seattle lines (not coincidentally in wealthier, less Asian neighborhoods), and was thus a good candidate for extension into areas further south of Rainier Beach. The decision by Seattle City Power to run high-voltage lines into the city in the late 1960s via the Skyway neighborhood thus provided a perfect opportunity to extend the line further, using the right-of-way to build another cut-and-cover tunnel in coordination with SCP to reach Skyway in 1974 and, after a lengthy legal battle with the city of Renton to run the line underground to a terminus in downtown near the commuter rail station, 1986. Initially thought to be the end of this line, in 1993 a new agreement was struck with Renton to extend the line further north, this time all the way to the north end of the city, near the Boeing and Kenworth Truck plants and a major redevelopment site on surplus land intended to become a mixed-use neighborhood. While viewed as somewhat redundant due to long-term plans to place a Soundrail commuter station in the area, the ability of the Subway to quickly build a bored tunnel vs. a lengthy and protracted fight with the USRA about building a new commuter station on their property won out and in June 2000, six months late and thus not in time for the 2000 Winter Olmypics, opened, connecting the "Landing" area in North Renton and suburban neighborhoods to its east to the Subway for the first time. The line posed a serious engineering challenge when the Eastside Extensions on the Lake Washington Floating Bridge, which runs on a viaduct above Rainer Valley to the Beacon Hill Tunnel, opened; an interchange stop between the lines on the viaduct median and the line below was desired, and the challenge of integrating the small transit plaza under the freeway viaduct and building out the infill station at Rainier Viaduct was a major reason for the Eastside Extensions' considerable construction delays and high costs.
The line begins at 85th Street and Ashworth Avenue, at the Seattle City Limits, and then runs south to pass under Central Avenue on the west side of Green Lake, granting names to both the terminus (Green Lake North) and a station providing access to the lake itself (Green Lake West) despite much of the neighborhood's commercial area having evolved on its east over the subsequent years. It connects to the Line 5 on the Crosstown Subway at 45th Street and then continues to 36th Street Station and passes under the cut, adjacent to the Central Avenue Bridge with one brief stop in the Westlake Avenue before stopping at Seattle Central Station, still under Central Avenue. At this point, the line enters the 3rd Avenue Tunnel and Dearborn Trunk, turning south of the Trunk with a stop at Judkins before branching off onto the Mount Baker Line, turning southwest after Mount Baker Station into a tunnel under Empire Way. The line stops at the Rainier Viaduct interchange infill station opened in November 1999, where connections to lines to the Eastside or West Seattle are available along with a bus plaza, and then continues on to Orcas Street, Othello Street and Rainier Beach. From there, the line passes under the City Power Tunnel, as it was named during construction, to Skyway and then Renton, where there are stops at Renton, Liberty Park, and finally Southlake Landing, its terminus.
Line 4 - Ballard to Sand Point
The Crosstown Line was a major priority for the city but was the fifth line to be opened, due to the fact that it did not take advantage of the 3rd Avenue-Dearborn spine that all other lines did; nonetheless, despite not "feeding" the centralized trunk model that city officials viewed as being a huge success and a point of pride for the system, there was nonetheless a desire to connect the densely populated (and wealthier) neighborhoods north of the Montlake Cut to each other without requiring transfers in the city center and backtracking. The Crosstown Line also would have connected Ballard, which until 1948 had no subway presence despite being a major employment and residential center, not only with the rest of the city's subways at Central Avenue (then-Lake City Line) and 10th Avenue (then-Madison Line), but also with the University of Washington and, beyond that, the major naval supply depot at Sand Point, thus meaning that the Crosstown Line would be the first to marginally extend out of the city limits. Thus was a subway run from Ballard to the University of Washington under 45th Street, the main trunk road of North Seattle, and opened in 1948 with its terminus at 10th Avenue, before being extended to Sand Point in 1956 and Golden Gardens on the city limits in 1958. In 1964, it was re-branded as Line 5 in the systemwide reorganziation, but the route pattern for obvious reasons remained identical; Line 5 is the only train that runs on the Crosstown Subway and thus, with headways of six minutes as in the rest of the system, it is the infrastructure that has the fewest trains per hour on its tracks.
The train begins on an interline with Line 1 at Golden Gardens at the city limits and runs to Ballard, but after Market Street it turns east rather than south, with one more stop at Leary Way to provide a stop in the eastern end of the neighborhood. It then runs towards 45th Street, with stops connecting it to Line 2 at Evanston Avenue and Line 3 at Interlake Avenue, and has one stop at Sunnyside Ave that has no connections to north-south lines. At its initial terminus immediately west of 10th Avenue, it provides connections to Line 5, and then stops at Memorial Way, the north entrance to the University of Washington campus. After this, it exits from the hill on which the university sits on an elevated guideway; it stops at the corner of 25th Avenue and 45th Street to provide connection to University Village, formerly a shopping center redeveloped in the late 2000s/early 2010s into a high-density residential eco-district, and then continues along 45th to a stop across from Seattle Children's Hospital (formerly Laurel Station, renamed in 2012 with the inauguration of a pedestrian bridge across the street directly to the hospital facilities) and then finally running on Sand Point Way to a terminus in the southwest corner of what is today Sand Point State Park, about a hundred meters north of the city limit at 65th Street. These three above-ground stations were all completely rebuilt and modernized (part of the pedestrian bridge and eco-district project) in 2010-12 after they had fallen into disrepair and were regarded as three of the most dilapidated stations in the system.
ITTL it has hosted twice - 1958 (in lieu of the '62 Worlds Fair) and then 2000. Even though Snoqualmie and Stevens (or Crystal for that matter) aren't as close to the city as Grouse is to Vancouver, they're all a whole lot closer than Whistler, so you can really consolidate events in the city and then spread the mountain events across those three major ski areas pretty efficiently. As I work my way backwards, we'll get to the 2000 Winter Olympics in time.
And entirely agreed on that... JFC
Will there be a wikibox for the 1904 landslide? I think that's the only one that doesn't have one now, other than the 1864 and 1868 ones that don't matter particularly much.
Only 1 Scottish team has 2 European trophies though iOTL
maybe i just need to do my own timeline where Aberdeen become the titan i wish they were hahaSo at some point, the Winter Olympics slide to 4N from 4N+2 with the Summer games...
The success of this year's World Baseball Classic, and the discourse it has spawned about baseball's popularity worldwide, has got me wondering about what baseball's international popularity might look like ITTL. Outside of TTL's balkanized North America, pretty much every baseball power, with the possible exception of Japan (Cuba, the DR, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, the Dutch Antilles, Mexico, Panama, Korea, Taiwan/Formosa) has had/will have a radically different relationship with the US in the Cincoverse than it did OTL in the late 19th/early 20th century, and its possible/probable that due to these much different circumstances, at least some of the countries from that list never develop a baseball culture. On the flip side, there are countries that OTL don't care much at all about baseball that could develop into baseballing nations depending on how the butterflies go; the most obvious candidates would be the nations where the US either has had a long-standing troop presence (Haiti, Nicaragua) or is fighting in/alongside during the GAW (El Salvador, Honduras, Peru, Chile, Argentina, also Nicaragua).
All of that also makes me wonder whether TTL's international baseball competition scene (the serious one which includes the game's biggest, brightest, and highest paid stars, not the high school/college/minor league afterthought it's been normally treated as until recently) could develop earlier, and in a more organic way. Even if baseball ends up being much less popular in the Cincoverse's version of Latin America/East Asia, the opportunity is certainly there with so many more states in North America all right next to each other.
All of that also makes me wonder whether TTL's international baseball competition scene (the serious one which includes the game's biggest, brightest, and highest paid stars, not the high school/college/minor league afterthought it's been normally treated as until recently) could develop earlier, and in a more organic way. Even if baseball ends up being much less popular in the Cincoverse's version of Latin America/East Asia, the opportunity is certainly there with so many more states in North America all right next to each other.
Great post.
You can also make the argument that, while it was established in Japan well before 1945, part of the reason baseball grew in popularity in Japan was the US occupation in the late 1940s. That's obviously butterflied here. Baseball was still popular before 1945 but that occupation might have made an impact in growing the sport post-war.
Speaking of post-WWII Japanese things from OTL that (likely) won't be as popular ITTL: Japanese pro wrestling. A combo of American troops bringing it over from the USA and especially Rikidozan being a hero to the beaten post-war population means puro is radically different, if it exists at all ITTL.
I'm curious about the Jewish population in Cinco de Mayo. A different immigration system could be interesting to explore one way or the other.
I believe that's the only one I haven't seen one made for
You should! Maybe Sir Alex stays there forever... one understands why he never returned to Rangers!Only 1 Scottish team has 2 European trophies though iOTL
Speaking of, I do wonder a bit if Rangers still has its... well, reputation, if you will, in a world where a United Ireland formally exits Westminster in the late 1910s. I could see an argument cut both directions.
Yessir
Thanks!
This is a good question and one I've actually given a fair bit of thought to! And that thought hasn't led me very far, lol. (In part, I need to make a decision as I'm tempted to do a Pre-Season Power Ranking for ITTL's MLB what with the season kicking off...)
I could see an argument that baseball would be more peculiarly American ITTL, what without the hegemon there to export it across the Caribbean from the Gulf Coast (sort of like gridiron football). With rugby, football, and ice hockey being big internationally-influenced sports in the US ITTL, I could see baseball filling the niche of being the sport that only really gets played in the US. This is probably not hugely realistic though; a lot East Asia played baseball because it was brought by American missionaries as early as the 19th century (British missionaries brought football), and if it took off in, say, China it could be huge in Asia. Since part of the thought exercise here is swapping around certain countries in East Asia's trajectory with certain countries in Latin America's (and vice versa... more to come!), the idea of a football-obsessed and baseball-obsessed East Asia could be really interesting, where baseball players with names like Kim, Chang and Nguyen are just as common if not more as the Suzukis and Ohtanis of the world, and the MLB has far fewer Ramirezes and Gonzalezes.
You make a good point about Haiti probably having a decent baseball culture for the reasons you describe, as would Nicaragua probably; Cuba/PR/SD may be a different story. I guess it could be a thing where baseball makes an impact, but football is also big in those countries due to sustained Spanish influence, but the further south you go the "Baseball Belt" erodes a bit (and Mexico may have more of a baseball culture as spring training there rather than Florida may be preferable for parts of the MLB), though with more American influence maybe Peru and Argentina have a culture too. IDK! Too many options, can't decide! I like both ideas a lot.
And I do like your point about the minors maybe being bigger and more organic. I sort of tipped my hand on this in the 2022 World Series update but the PCL gets absorbed into the MLB rather than teams getting deported to the West Coast by greedy owners, so the minor league culture would probably be a fair bit different, and you'd probably have affiliates studded across the CSA, Canada and Texas as well as smaller American metropolitan areas.
A more Anglophile Japan might have football just be the dominant sport that everybody cares about; it was sort of heading that way before baseball nipped that in the bud. Ichiro Suzuki as a star striker taking the Samurai Blue deep into the World Cup, anyone?
My thinking is that the Jewish population in the US, at least, is maybe a little less than double sans the Shoah, but probably heavily concentrated in New York/New Jersey and adjacent states, especially without a major migration to Florida with permanent retirees rather than international snowbirding a la Britons in Spain probably being the case (though if you get some kind of North American Schengen by present day, who knows. I'm certainly mulling it)
I think it really depends on the status of Celtic, if massive irish catholic migration still happens and the clubs fanbases come to represent 2 different identities i think some animosity is inevitable, football violence etc occurs over far less after all.
But if the Orange Order are less of a force in Scotland and the UK i think rangers could be more of the Scottish-British team rather than Scottish-British-Loyalist-Protestant team, but it is an interesting one
Fair point. As I've written it so far, the Order are huge in Ulster and Canada and quite a bit less influential in GB proper (or Australia, ironically, since that's where the Sydney Affair happened). An Ireland that isn't just a playground for Eamon De Valera's agrarian-soft theocratic worldview in the 1930s and 1940s is probably a great deal more developed (its a trope, but Michael Collins was pretty keen on industry and developmentalism, and I don't know how Joe Devlin felt about those things but I can't imagine he goes the full Fianna Fail) and while there's probably plenty of Prot outmigration from Ulster rather than live under Rome Rule Ireland's outflow of people probably stanches at some point as the island develops much earlier.
So I could see Rangers being a club heavily supported by Protestants in Glasgow and that being a major part of their supporters' identity, but it may not have anything as extreme as a policy to never sign Catholics or basically becoming Scottish Linfield