Map: NYC Neighborhoods As Premier League Teams

Photograph by Tien Mao/Gothamist

The best/worst part about soccer is that, as a global sport, it NEVER ends. The Premier League is kicking off against next weekend, and our own Tien Mao spotted the above ad from NBC Sports, urging all passersby to "Keep Calm and Pick A Side". They divided up a map of NYC into the twenty Premier League sides, but made some pretty strange neighborhood-team associations.

Let's start with the Manchester clubs: Manchester United as the Upper East Side, while "noisy neighbors" Manchester City as Midtown/Times Square. Yet "Citeh" are the ones with all the abundant spending—and United are the team where all the people who want to be at the center of the universe flock to. United should be Times Square instead, no question.

On to the big London clubs. First, shame on NBC Sports for missing the very obvious connection of putting Chelsea FC in Chelsea, possibly a bigger miss than anything Fernando Torres has managed. Instead, they're down in Battery Park and the Financial District—which makes sense for the outlandish spending, if nothing else. But bitter rivals Arsenal in the West Village and Spurs in the East Village? We're talking years of antagonism and hatred. There's only one place in NYC they should be: Queens and Brooklyn.

We could go on. Storied, globally supported Liverpool as the pricy Upper West Side? The only place you'll never walk alone is Fairway. With them being less than a mile from their rival Everton, move both of them down to the Village instead. Industrial, chip-on-their-shoulder West Ham as a tiny slice of Turtle Bay? They should be be the Bronx, not Sunderland.

We will concede one assignment as being perfect, though: Staten Island as Newcastle, solely on the Jersey Shore-Geordie Shore connection.