With the bulk of the major soccer competitions coming to a close in Europe over the past couple months, it seems like a good time to give out one final trophy. While this one may not be quite as prestigious as a league championship or the Champions League or Euro title, the battle for the top European club online in the U.S. is still a heated one. And judging from all the off-season tours that many of these teams have made to America in the past few years, the battle for American fandom is one all of these clubs would like to win.

Traffic to the team pages on ESPN Soccernet, BigSoccer.com, and Goal.com was included to give a sampling of the casual to the hardcore fans. I chose the thirteen most popular clubs from the biggest leagues across Europe, and just to prove that I have no bias here, I didn’t even include my favorite team (although not winning a major trophy for nearly 4 decades would have made it hard to justify including Newcastle United).

It’s no surprise that Manchester United, regarded as the most popular club in the world, has the biggest fan base in the U.S. The English Premier League looks to have the greatest following on the whole as well, taking four of the top five spots.

But which team has the most engaged fans? A look as visits per unique visitor for these three sites shows which fan base just can’t get enough of their team.

The tables are somewhat turned on their head with Juventus going from tenth to first with nearly five visits per unique visitor, and Manchester United dropping from the top spot all the way to 9th. It looks like Liverpool, with the fifth most unique visitors and second most visits per UV, could be the real winner here. Their team slogan, “You will never walk alone,” appears to be appropriate even in the online channel.

With soccer’s growing popularity in the U.S., this is a battle that is sure to go on for years, and while there may not be any trophy for the winner, I’m sure the financial rewards will be more than enough.

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