| Barathrum | bretbloomquist@yahoo.com
Since:2003-09-02 20:45:29 | Fantasy Football
Barathrum 124 Points
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| Three pro soccer games in three countries in 10 days
04/07/09, 21:30 4 Comment
Tigres at Indios in Juarez on Sunday
Arsenal at Newcastle following Sunday
Club Americas vs. Cruz Azul in El Paso, Wednesday
I only wrote a column about one of the above and here it is:
Sometimes late in the morning as I sit down to check e-mail and write stories, I'll flip on the Fox Soccer Channel or ESPN Deportes, not so much to watch soccer as to listen to it.
That's what initially drew me to the sport a decade ago, the endless noise -- chanting, singing, banging drums, blowing horns, cheers and groans, the British accents of the announcers, the sudden explosion when the home team scores in some place like Mexico City, Rome, Buenos Aires or London.
Having said that, nothing prepared me for just how loud it would be in Newcastle upon Tyne last Saturday when I finally checked "See an English Premier League soccer game" off the bucket list.
The din was ceaseless -- well, until the final minutes of relegation-threatened Newcastle's 3-1 loss to Arsenal -- and wonderful, in part the product of a continent that understands stadiums should be built to funnel noise down to the field, not up to the heavens.
When I remember one of the great moments of my life as a tourist, the clamor coursing through St. James Park may be memory No. 1.
As someone who makes a living going to sporting events, I'm always fascinated to see how different the experience is in other countries, and the experience of a soccer match in Northeast England is as different as can be from America or even Juarez.
In fact, relative to the Indios, the scoreboard situation at St. James Park was exactly the opposite. The new, state-of-the art stadium (perhaps the most beautiful stadium architecturally I've ever seen) had small clocks in each corner of the field, but not a single scoreboard anywhere.
Want to know the score? Watch the game and keep track, which everyone did.
There were no concessions in the stands, no vendors, no beer, no steady stream of people saying, "Excuse me" as they went to buy drinks and use the toilet.
Each ticket gives the holder access to one bar near their seat, and that bar was full until five minutes before kickoff. Instants later the stands were full, the bars empty, and they stayed that way until the halftime whistle, at which point just about everyone headed back down to the bar to slam one beer.
My almost random choice of Newcastle turned out to be inspired, a perfect middle leg on a 10-day stretch where I saw three games in three countries (Tigres at Indios last week, Cruz Azul vs. America in the Sun Bowl this week).
A decade ago on my last day of my previous trip to the United Kingdom, I blew threw Newcastle on a train from Edinburg to London and the town was so attractive -- full of beautiful bridges and an ancient city wall that Scotsman William Wallace and his invading army once breached -- I almost wanted to get off the train right there. Instead I made a mental note and when I realized Newcastle was playing at home on the one week off in the spring I had free to go to England, that was the choice.
Newcastle is as fanatical and as proud of its team as you would expect from an isolated city of 250,000 with a major-league squad to rally around, though I may have seen Newcastle in its final year, at least for the time being, in the Premier League.
Their love of their team is chronicled in the superb sports movie "Goal," which every soccer fan, particularly every Hispanic soccer fan, should see.
The other thing the town is known for all over the United Kingdom is its "nightlife," which can be translated as "drunkeness." I was in New Orleans two weeks before I went to England and Bourbon Street looked like a library compared to Newcastle, where I saw two women keel over to the floor and pass out in the same pub about 30 minutes apart.
I'll be back at some point, if not to Newcastle, at least somewhere in England where 50,000 fans gather to sing and cheer. As the final seconds ticked down on the game, I knew one fact with certainty: My first EPL game would not be my last. |
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