Our First Live Football Match!

Since we accomplished so much of our sightseeing while Calvin was here, we took a day to rest yesterday and hung around the hotel, sleeping in and doing a bit of shopping in the area.  Unfortunately, this morning we found out on the BBC news that a two day Tube strike starts today, meaning we’re stuck in Wembley until Friday, unless we want to brave the masses of crowds who will be relying on the buses!  Thankfully we scheduled extra time in London so we’ll just wait until the strike is over to resume our sightseeing…

The silver lining to the Tube strike is the fact that there’s a huge football game scheduled at Wembley stadium tonight (England vs. Andorra), and a large number of fans won’t be able to make it here without the Tube, making tickets easy to obtain.  When we planned this trip, attending a football game in either Spain or the UK was something we wanted to do, but we thought our schedule hadn’t timed out to be anywhere while a major game was happening, so we scrapped the idea.  Since we hadn’t looked up the schedule for national teams (we only looked up Premier League clubs), we didn’t know about this game until we saw today’s news, which was reporting on how many fans wouldn’t be able to make it, but some die hards were going to extreme measures (such as paying £200 for a cab ride or walking 9 miles) to get to Wembley stadium without the Tube.  Luckily for us, Wembley stadium is only a 5 minute walk away and since so many fans couldn’t come, there were plenty of tickets to be had when we wandered over to see what was available this afternoon, just a couple hours before the game.

Since this is our first time attending a football game and I don’t know a thing about football, we decided not to splurge on really good seats and got tickets in the front row of the nosebleeds for £39 each.  We were able to see everything reasonably well from here and it would have cost more than double that to go down one section lower.  Now that I’ve been to my first football match and discovered that it doesn’t put me to sleep the way a hockey game does (I just can’t watch hockey live, I’m sorry!), maybe next time we’ll go for better seats 

Although the game wasn’t really suspenseful because Andorra sucks so badly they really had no chance of winning (they actually printed in the program that the “opponent is less than formidable”), tonight’s game was important because it was a 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa Qualifier.  Everyone was sure England would win, but it was the points they obtained in the game that mattered, and they achieved what was needed of them –beating Andorra 6-0!  I actually felt bad for Andorra’s goal keeper because he was kept busy the whole game while England’s goal keeper could have sat down and had a picnic – I think Andorra only got one shot on goal!

The bonus for us this evening was getting to see David Beckham play for England for the first time in two years!  We still remember the fuss he created when he came to Vancouver a couple years ago to play an exhibition game.  I don’t really get the guy’s appeal because I’m not a football follower (I mean, yeah, he looks good in Armani underwear, but so do a lot of celebrities!), but tonight, seeing him in action and hearing the fans shout “shoot!” every time he got passed the ball (even if he was nowhere near the net), turned me into a bit of a fan.  The way he can curve a ball with a corner kick is honestly quite impressive…

So, now I can say I’ve been to a live football match and I enjoyed it!  I got lost at times, but thankfully my brother is a die hard football fan and clarified everything for me after, having followed the game on television back home.  Hopefully some day I’ll get a chance to experience a game that is packed full of fans and more exciting and competitive than this one!